Korean Wave influences World Religion
In many diverse places in the world, now we often hear the word, Hallyu, which means “Korean Wave”. Across all over the world, from young to elder there are numerous people who are manias of the new Korean popular cultures such as K-Pop and Korean home dramas. Not only the neighboring countries such as Japan and China, but also people in Europe and America are wildly crazy about Hallyu. Korean popular culture is popular among people in Poland as well like Kida mentioned in her article like following, “It will discuss to what extent Poles are familiar with Korean culture, music, dramas, and other elements of popular culture. Korean wave was coined by the Chinese media in 2001 to describe the rapid rise in popularity of Korean pop culture. It refers to Korean popular culture spreading to other countries through the mass media.”[1]
Thanks to the spread of the media, Korean pop culture became one of the indispensable factors of life for some people. For example in Japan, group of elderly people around age of 60 or more were into Korean house drama “Winter Sonata”, which created a special world, that was isolated from the daily world. The main actor of this drama, Bae Yong Joon, was treated like a god for the Japanese fandom. When he visited Japan, more than 5,000 people waited for him to come out from the boarding gate and when fans finally actually see him, they cried of ultimate excitement. Almost every fans create their own round fan with his photograph on to show their love to Bae Yong Joon. Fans even call him “the founder of a Korean culture” and shows strong faith on him. In the interview of a Japanese TV program, group of married women said, “Even if we are married, we don’t feel bad for our husbands, when we fell in love with Bae Yong Joon”. This is creating extraordinary world of Bae Yong Joon that ignores ordinary life for Japanese women, which could be thought highly religious thing.
Also, there is a K-Pop group called “Bigbang” whom are really popular among young people internationally. Especially G-Dragon, a member of Bigbang, is overwhelming popular because of his wild fashion and powerful voice. In addition his production includes various religious aspects. First of all, his stage name “G-Dragon” came from a part of the bible, which indicates Satan as a dragon. Also, in the music video of one of his most hit song, “Coup D’etat”, there are scenes deeply related to Christianity. In middle of this MV, there is an appearance of “Tree of Life” that is in the Garden of Eden. Also there are tons of crows in the MV, which also represent Satan. Lastly, in G-Dragon perform as Horus, which represent anti-Christianity. Overall in the music video of “Coup D’etat”, there are many Christianity elements represented, which declare that this production is a type of “Religion in Popular Culture”.
Source
[1] Kida, Pawel. “Wind of Change.” The Global Impact of South Korean Popular Culture: Hallyu Unbound (2014): 65.
