According to a study released on Monday, Korean cultural items, spearheaded by the emergence of K-pop and K-dramas, have continued to acquire global appeal over the last year.
According to a joint annual report released by the Korean Foundation for International Cultural Exchange and the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism, consumption of Korean cultural contents increased in all categories in 2021, including beauty, drama, fashion, entertainment shows, games, animation, and publications, as well as in all categories in the previous year.
In the recent year, 61.1 percent of all respondents who indicated they appreciated Korean material reported that they had consumed much more Korean dramas, movies, entertainment television series, and games than they had in the previous year. According to the 2020 survey, 58.5 percent of respondents stated that they absorbed more Korean material in the previous year.
The majority of those who answered the survey stated that they mostly consume K-drama, K-pop, and other television series through internet platforms. Netflix, on the other hand, dominated the streaming of movies.
"Online consumption of contents has become more common, which has served as a major factor in the global consumption of Korean contents," said Choi Kyung-hee, the head of the research team at the Korean Foundation for International Cultural Exchange. "However, this is a result that cannot be achieved without the competitiveness of the content itself," he added.
Aside from that, the research gives an insight into how Korean cultural content has been received over the course of the previous few years. One in every four respondents claimed K-pop was the first thing that sprang to mind when they were asked what comes to mind when they think about Korea. The following were the most popular: Korean food (11.4 percent), K-dramas (7.5 percent), Korean celebrities (7.0 percent), and IT brands/products (7.0 percent) (6.85 percent ). In the previous study, which was conducted in 2020, IT brands/products were rated third, while K-drama was placed fifth. Up until this year, the Korean War or North Korea were virtually always mentioned as in the top five responses to the same question. The first annual report was published in 2012.
Out of all of the K-pop singers, BTS, which has been the most popular music group for the previous five years, has shown to be unstoppable over and again. BTS was chosen as the favorite group by 26.7 percent of those who answered the poll, with Blackpink coming in second with 10.4 percent.
The Netflix original "Squid Game," which received 21.2 percent of the 4,850 Korean drama lovers' votes, was the most popular show, followed by "Crash Landing on You," which received 2.2 percent.
In tandem with Hallyu's resurgence, anti-Hallyu sentiment increased by 6.3 percentage points from the previous year to reach 30.7 percent. In response to this question, respondents stated that "over commercialization" of Korean cultural material is a major contributing factor to their negative feelings. The necessity to preserve their country's cultural products from Korean cultural elements was also given as a motivation for anti-hallyu attitude by the respondents.
Between Nov. 5 and Dec. 8 of last year, 8,500 people in 18 countries — China, Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, India, Vietnam, Australia, the United States, Brazil, Argentina, France, the United Kingdom, Russia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and South Africa — participated in the survey, which was conducted by the Pew Research Center.
