De/Constructing the soft power discourse in Hallyu

ABSTRACT

This study examines the discourse surrounding the transnational flows of South Korean popular culture, known as Hallyu (the Korean Wave), and its relationship to the country’s soft power through a discourse analysis of Korean news and social media. Specifically, the study explores how Hallyu was addressed as Korea’s soft power tool during the COVID-19 pandemic, when it gained even greater popularity overseas through digital means. The study questions how local cultural intermediaries, such as journalists, critics and YouTubers, have engaged with the Hallyu phenomenon. Although Hallyu is often considered a core component of Korea’s soft power, aimed at increasing its influence in overseas reception points, there is a lack of studies on the meanings of Hallyu as a discursive construct in the Korean mediascape. Therefore, this study explores how Korean news and social media perceive and represent the global circulation of their local cultural content.

KEYWORDS:

• Hallyu (the Korean Wave)
• soft power
• discourse
• Korean popular culture
• nationalism
• gukppong

Acknowledgments

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the workshop, “Korean Public Diplomacy and Soft Power,” held at the University of British Columbia on March 13-14, 2023 and funded by the UBC Centre for Korean Research. The author is grateful to the workshop organizer Dr Hyung-Gu Lynn and other presenters for their comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author().

Notes

1. Critics have periodised the development of Hallyu by distinguishing between its early phase in the intra-Asian context (until the late 2000s) and its later period of social media-driven global expansion (since the late 2000s) (Jin, 2016). The pandemic period may offer another turning point for Hallyu especially in terms of the scale and channels of cultural flows. While the periodisation of Hallyu is not a key research question of this article, further research on the distinctive characteristics of Hallyu during the pandemic will benefit a historical understanding of this cultural wave.

2. This framework is already a few decades old. Originally, in response to commentary on the decline of the United States’ economic and military power during the post-World War 2 era – especially in the 1980s, Nye (1990) proposed the soft power concept to suggest that the US’ international power remains strong because the country still possesses significant, albeit seemingly intangible, power to attract other countries.

3. The conservative Yoon Suk Yeol administration (2022 – Present), newly elected in the middle of the pandemic, has continued to use the soft power concept to celebrate Korea’s global status as an advanced nation-state, following up on the precedent liberal Moon Jae-In administration (2017–2022)’s frequent use of soft power in the government discourse. Compared with the predecessor, the Yoon administration appears to utilise the soft power concept explicitly to affirm its market-oriented approach to the development of cultural sectors as shown in the president’s speeches. For example, the Yoon administration invited the soft power scholar Nye as the moderated discussant at the president’s talk at the Kennedy School of Harvard University in April 2023 (Institute of Politics Harvard Kennedy School, 2023). The retired Harvard professor and soft power guru asked the president what was being done for increasing Korea’s ‘already impressive soft power’. The president responded that Korea’s emerging soft power was led primarily by private sectors and markets and thus soft power might not be ‘something the government can take the helm of’; for him, the role of the government in soft power development was to deregulate and thus facilitate free markets for industries to grow. While highly regarding the role of free competition in industries in cultural flows of Hallyu, he emphasised, “I will get rid of all that [i.e. any regulatory measures that restrict US companies’ entrance into the Korean market]. Smiling, Nye responded, ‘I would say that is a perfect answer. You would get an A at Kennedy School’ (Institute of Politics Harvard Kennedy School, 2023, 36:35–38:00). This conversation between President Yoon and Professor Nye reveals how the Yoon administration utilises the soft power concept as a symbolic instrument to re-engineer Korea as a neoliberal nation-state that is aligned with the Western-centric, liberal-democratic world order in which the original soft power thesis is based.

4. Chosun Ilbo, JoongAng Ilbo, and Dong-A Ilbo are considered the ‘big three’ newspapers as they are dominant in media markets and take a conservative and right-leaning stance on socio-political issues (e.g. right-wing nationalism, anti-immigration, and anti-communism; Hundt, Walton, & Lee, 2019; Jeon, Kim, & Woo, 2022; Moon, 2022). These highly circulated newspapers have maintained their influence for decades and have owned their nationwide cable TV networks (referred to as general programming channels) since the 2010s. In comparison, the other three newspapers analysed for the present study – Hankyoreh, Kyunghyang Shinmun, and Hankook Ilbo – are known for their relatively liberal stance. Hankyoreh and Kyunghyang Shinmun are considered explicitly liberal or progressive, whereas Hankook Ilbo is considered to be modestly liberal or centrist. In this regard, Reporters Without Borders (2022) has identified the latter as ‘centrist’ in comparison to Hankyoreh and Kyunghyang Shinmun, categorised as ‘liberal’ media outlets.

5. According to the BIGKINDS database, from 2005 to 2011, the keywords appeared in 2–10 articles (in all six newspapers) each year.

6. While two recent big data studies have revealed that the Hallyu phenomenon is reduced to its economic effects in Korean news discourses (Hwang & Park, 2020; Park & Lee, 2022), this tendency seems to be evident in major conservative newspapers (Jung & Hwang, 2015).

7. In protest of Korea’s deployment of the U.S. missile defence system (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, also known as THAAD), the Chinese government banned Korean media content in 2017. Accordingly, Korean TV shows disappeared from China’s broadcast media until 2022 (Yonhap News, 2022). China’s hostility to Korea in the late 2010s has been considered an ideological pursuit of national identity through the creation of external enemies (e.g. demonising Japan in the early 2010s and Korea in the late 2010s; Rozman, 2020).

8. Information on the 10 videos is available in the References section.

9. Only one video out of the 10 analysed videos is narrated in a female voice; however, as this particular video’s narration is dubbed by an artificial intelligence (AI) program, the YouTuber’s gender is not identifiable. The other nine videos are not narrated by an AI program but by the channel creators.