Squid Game, Hellbound: will South Korea displace Japan as the new cultural superpower in Asia?

At the beginning of the pandemic, I vowed not to slide into couch-potato mode and crawl out of the television screen looking like Sadako from Ring after a nighttime Netflix binge.

But I seemed to be in a minority keeping the streaming addiction at bay and soon it seemed everyone was recommending something I "must see" as streaming platforms multiplied and grew their subscriber bases. At this rate, Netflix alone will have close to a quarter of a billion subscribers in 2022.

However, I did not foresee how this streaming wave would be the thing to launch a new and potentially massive export business for South Korea: its culture. And judging by the hype, it seems that as the world gets a taste of Korea, everyone is craving more.

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And if that wasn't enough, I went back for more, glued this time to Hellbound, the latest chart-topper. I binged that too in one sitting.

Full marks for the tight scripts, sharp acting, entertainment value and those incredible cliffhangers that American television pioneered. Even though it was rather more nasty and violent than the things I usually watch, it made sense in the context of the show.

Both dramas teach the uninitiated something about the South Koreans. In Squid Game it is the prevalence of huge amounts of household debt that they carry with them in everyday life, and the anxiety that credit cards and loan sharks create and the potential impact rising interest rates may soon have on society and the economy.

In Hellbound, we see that Koreans are quite religious. This is the main theme of the series, with three computer-animated monsters dragging sinners to hell after beating them up and frying them; a high-octane version of a certain scene from the 1990 film Ghost that repeats ad nauseam. Christianity is a major religion in Korea, along with Buddhism and Islam - all peacefully practised, unlike in the drama. And I admit, after recovering from the six-hour square-eye sessions, I had ideas of going out to find some Korean BBQ and popping open a tub of kimchi.

This makes me wonder if the sudden interest in Korean television shows will pique people's interest in other aspects of Korean culture, as it did for me. With the Oxford English Dictionary giving Korea a nod by adding 26 Korean words to its tome last year, this seems very likely.

If this isn't a passing fad and these new shows in a strange language with unfamiliar sights and sounds remain a focal point of the entertainment media, could this spill over to have a meaningful impact on the South Korean economy through exports? Or specifically:

Can South Korea harness the kind of cultural fascination that Japan did? Where every visitor falls totally in love with the place and tells all their friends they must visit.

Will this kick off the Korean tourism industry once Covid-19 is over, enticing visitors from far and wide, not just the Chinese, to come and take a look? Will Seoul, Busan and Jeju become the next hot destinations?

Does this also mean Korean restaurants and Korean products will be popping up everywhere? Will bulgogi become as popular as sushi - which you can now pick up in just about any supermarket or convenience store anywhere on the planet?

SELECTIVE LOVE

In neighbouring Japan, Korean cultural imports have already progressed much further than for the rest of the world. Korean dramas, food and a multitude of products from kimchi to cosmetics are not at all unusual in everyday life. There are some 825,000 resident ethnic Koreans in Japan today and with the two countries' relationship at times being strained, the popularity of each other's products tends to blow hot and cold.

However, 2002 was a pivotal year for television, with the drama Winter Sonata being exported to Japan. Loaded with a very pretty cast led by Bae Yong-joon and Choi Ji-woo, it took Japan by storm. Middle-aged ladies were drooling over Bae and screaming tearfully at the airport when he and other members of the cast came and went. Scenes of the gooey television romance adorned everything from bento boxes to pachinko machines. Twenty years later, Korean products are enjoying another mini-boom in Japan and the Korean districts in Tokyo of Okubo and Ueno are extremely busy.

But cultural exports and influence can be a sensitive topic, and not to everyone's taste, as evidenced by China blocking K-pop social media for what it calls "unhealthy" behaviour. North Korea went all-out anti-South, slamming K-pop as a "vicious cancer" and dishing out a death sentence by firing squad for smuggling copies of Squid Game into the country - ironically the theme of the show. Perhaps some product-tweaking may be in order for those markets.

TOTAL LOVE

For the moment at least, it appears that the world has suddenly gone crazy for Korean culture. The look is being mimicked through cosmetics and fashion, and manufactured pop groups such as BTS and Blackpink have been in full view ahead of Christmas.

Of course, all of this is no fluke. As early as in the 1990s, the Korean government launched an initiative to build a powerful entertainment industry to challenge the international markets. With the help of the conglomerates Samsung and Hyundai, production started on films, television shows and music based on models that were well-developed in the United States and other Western countries. The missing piece of the puzzle appears to have been the right distribution medium, as things really took off 15 years later, first with YouTube and then Netflix.

An international milestone was achieved in 2012, when after years of hard work Psy shot out on the world stage with the hit Gangnam Style about a hip-and-trendy district of Seoul. The music video was the first to reach a billion views on YouTube.

Korean culture also got a major boost when Parasite in 2020 became the first foreign-language film to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards, putting a spotlight on Korea's wealth gap. But the floodgates were about to open when Netflix got a housebound captive audience with the outbreak of Covid-19.

For years now, Netflix has offered up around 80 Korean dramas and films, but the surge in popularity of such content after Parasite is solidly securing the distribution of future productions and funding a boom for independent studios. Currently, entertainment exports from the emerging cultural superpower are estimated at US$10 billion. That's just a tenth of the mature electronics industry, but it is growing fast.

I suspect Korean food will soon boom around the world, just as Japanese food did back in the 1990s when raw fish and seaweed went from curiosities to the height of sophistication. Korean food is almost as alien to palates around the world, but could rapidly become just as common and well-liked.

GET SOME GANGNAM STYLE

So, is South Korea to become an exporting cultural superpower? As with all products finding new markets, some refinement and development is probably still needed - especially if the Chinese market is to be properly captured. But for much of the rest of the world, the Koreans seem to have cracked the film, television and music business. And we'll soon get to like feasting on bulgogi, kimchi and ramyeon.

As for tourism, that will be a bit of a challenge. We'll have to wait and see where we can and cannot go next summer, and if Korea can catch the wave. I haven't been to Seoul in over 10 years, but I must admit I am rather curious to go take a fresh look when I can. Until then, it is going to be hard to not fire up Netflix and see what Seoul pulls out of the hat next.

Neil Newman is a thematic portfolio strategist focused on pan-Asian equity markets

This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

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