Why do we even have Hyun Bin and other Korean entertainers endorsing Philippine garments, digital connectivity, and beauty products?
Clearly, another alien culture has insinuated itself into our national consciousness - If there is any.
And I would like to quote liberally from an UNCTAD (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development) report on the creative economy in Korea.
Let us have soju and grilled pork skin while we go over this.
Korea acknowledges, with evident seriousness, that the world is changing from factory-driven economies, to knowledge and creative economies. The soft but pervasive kind.
It intends to be a major global player.
In 2013, the Korean government formally set creative economy as a major policy agenda and is switching to an economic paradigm founded on “Korean creativity.”
It defines creative economy as a new economic strategy that creates new industries and markets by fusing art, imagination, and creativity with science, technology and ICT.
It is no accident that a Korean wave of entertainment fares consisting of pop music, TV dramas, and movies, collectively called “hallyu,” rose like a tsunami to inundate Asia and roared on to other lands.
This phenomenon is driven by the State that ordered its ministries to work as a team to execute a game strat, 'the Creative Economy Action Plan and Measures to Establish a Creative Economic Ecosystem.”
The ministries are equivalent to our own DTI, DoST, DICT, DF, DEPed, DOT, DBM, and include attached agencies such as the Intellectual Property Office, and the Bureau of Small and Medium Scale Industries.
The only difference is that the Korean offices talk to each other.
With efficiency, Korea has emerged strongly as a new center for the production of transnational pop culture in the world, only over the last three decades.
Kenpai to that!
UNCTAD observes that “the success of the Republic of Korea as a cultural exporter is often attributed to its high quality cultural products incorporating Western elements while never losing its edge through its re-creation of traditional Korean values and cultural identity.“
We should take note of this: the values and the identity of another race.
The report says the lower cultural barrier among Asians made it easy for Korean content to ensconced itself in other households.
TV, social media and digital streaming like Netflix have facilitated the deep inroads of Korean content, reaching as far as Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East.
The Korean hunks who are “makalaglag-panty” have done their jobs well.
CNN has heralded that Korea has become the "Hollywood of the East" dazzling millions of fans around the globe.
The BBC has referred to the Korean Wave as a national brand that ranks with international Korean corporations like Samsung and Hyundai.
The UNCTAD adds that “K-pop, television drama, and movies are becoming the newest engine for expanding the country's cultural exports and an integral part of the country's national image.”
“The enthusiasm has often led to Hallyu fans craving other Korean cultural content and Korean language education.”
“The booming presence and enjoyment of Korean popular culture has transformed into preference for other Korean products and lifestyles alike, leading to an increase in Korean product sales overseas”
Fans imbibe taste for Korean electronics like smartphones or software programs.
The growing interest in Korean culture has further triggered a rise in inbound foreign tourists.
Some fans travel to Korea to visit places where popular Korean dramas and movies were filmed, thereby generating other income streams for Korea.
The popularity of “Crash Landing on You” when locked-down audiences went to Netflix at the start of pandemic has hooked them to other Korean fares.
A few years before, "Descendants of the Sun," a military-themed melodrama, made fans out of 2.3 billion Chinese.
The Korean rapper and songwriter PSY went viral in the web with his monster hit, "Gangnam Style," and set a world record with more than 1.9 billion views on YouTube.
That is light years away from our own Ivana Alawis hitting more than 15 million hits on YouTube while washing clothes in her sando, braless.
Ivana is cute and funny but we doubt her vlogs will lead to a renaissance of Filipino content.
Meantime, according to the Korea Creative Content Agency's statistics, exports of contents industries from the Republic of Korea have increased steadily in recent years.
Exports were USD 1,373 million in 2006, and more than tripled to USD 4,302 million in 2011.
And counting.
According to the Korean government, the content industry's exports had maintained an average of 13.4 percent growth for five years since 2010, boosted by the spread of Korean pop culture.
In our previous column, we mentioned how Korea has apparently wrested the creative content initiative from Japan which targets the children and the nerds.
We will talk about Ghibli, Hello Kitty and the Japanese “kawaii” culture next week. -30