To Hallyu and Beyond: Strengthening the image of Korea the Brand
Part III: Moving forward from an inferior past
Public diplomacy is a country’s channel in communicating with its foreign audiences and in promoting its national interests and foreign policies (Lee 2011, Huijgh 2016). Moreover, being innovative is a significant strategy in public diplomacy. Goff (2013) has used language as an example to show how important it is to innovate especially after globalisation. Historically, learning a language helps people understand a culture more so when it comes to its values and beliefs. However, with globalisation, some languages have been perceived as superior to other languages. Therefore, translation has been suggested to attract audiences who are not keen on learning the language.
In this article, we will understand how South Korea has successfully found ways to continue to innovate and be a top diplomat. One may say that a country’s public diplomacy has been conducted successfully when the actor and the audience have a good collaboration and a horizontal reflexivity. In this manner, there is a multidimensional reciprocity instead of a vertical top-down communication.
Part III: Innovation // Public Diplomacy
PUBLIC DIPLOMACY is the interaction between actors from different countries. This interaction fosters relationships and influences policy (Williamson 2014). Public diplomacy is done in several ways such as public relations, cultural diplomacy, nation branding, and international broadcasting (Gilboa 2016). Traditional public diplomacy was focused on information management and cultural promotion. There were cultural events and exchange programs in order to create mutual understanding between countries (Huijgh 2016). Certainly, public diplomacy is a significant tool for soft power. However, due to the prominence of the digital revolution, there is a global connectivity that has served as a new platform for these interactions. This paves the way for digital diplomacy– an innovative public diplomacy effort especially in targeting younger audiences. Hence, this new setting has made actors reflect on how audiences view their actions (and therefore country); and they restructured their approach. This has pushed actors to communicate directly with the public audience through social networking sites thereby creating a virtual community. This has been termed as “Facebook diplomacy” and “Twiplomacy” (Gilboa 2016). Aside from communication, this new platform has also served as a great distributor of media content that has hastened the spread and increase of the popularity of hallyu (Suntikul 2019).
HALLYU
The South Korean government has encouraged the production and spread of hallyu through its policies and decrees. President Kim Dae Jung has called it a “chimney-less industry” for economic development. Subsequently, during President Roh Moo Hyun’s administration, he declared that the national objective was to be “one of the world’s top five content powers in 2010” hence the creation of the Korea Creative Content Agency in 2009 to encourage and facilitate the production of Korean popular culture content (Suntikul 2019).
As discussed in the previous article, the entertainment industry of South Korea is still in the hands of private companies. These companies are responsible for producing and marketing their products domestically and internationally. With this, the South Korean government considers it as an opportunity in cultural politics whereby they can use these products to increase and strengthen their influence (Huat 2012 in Kim 2012 p 550). In this manner, the success of hallyu was a product of combined efforts between the government and private companies.
On the role of celebrities in diplomacy, Quessard (2020) writes that, with their fame and influence, they are able to act as ambassadors by depicting another image of their country. In a similar note, Tyler and Beyerinck (2016) consider various actors (including celebrities) to contribute to the positive and negative reputation of their countries abroad. This is due to an experience of personal connection between the celebrities and their fans whereby messages are authentic and untouched by government officials. This is “a very important factor in national image in an information-saturated world where you are what you seem” (Copeland 2009 in Tyler and Beyerinck 2016 p 524). This personal connection is a significant factor particularly in relaying messages to foreign audiences. Hence, this experience leads to new opportunities for engagements in public diplomacy as the public see celebrities as reliable advocates.
As an example, BTS is considered to be the most successful case as their global success reaches a new level for hallyu. The group is regarded as an effective Korean popular culture producer and exporter with an annual contribution of $3.6 billion to the economy. Due to their success, more fans are curious about South Korea. In fact, seven percent of tourist arrivals in 2017 were because of their interest in BTS especially when they became Seoul’s Honorary Tourism Ambassadors (Suntikul 2019). The government website “Imagine Your Korea” has a guide dedicated to BTS spots such as photo shoot and filming locations for fans to “recreate the scenes yourself, or simply bask in the knowledge that your bias was once standing in the exact same spot, breathing the same air, and seeing the same view”. Furthermore, the website has many suggested hallyu itineraries which you can visit here, here and here. Kim (2012 p 550) argues that it is hard to compare South Korea’s tourism resources to that of China’s. Nevertheless, hallyu products that have peaked commercial interests and consumption makes the Korean Wave to be “arguably the most successful case of Korean public diplomacy”.
PUBLIC POLICY
Hallyu has contributed greatly not only to South Korea’s economy, but also to the country’s foreign policy. Now that South Korea has found its niche, it is time for them to show the rest of the world how it is done. This corresponds with Lee’s (2011 p 157) idea that since “a middle power that cannot compete with strong powers, soft power is an attractive diplomatic capital to invest.” Since 2009, South Korea has been “passing on the secrets of its affluence to… developing nations from four continents, from Algeria to Turkey to Bolivia to the Philippines”. This knowledge sharing has been coined by Hong (2014 p 202) as the “Korea Kit”– a combination of a self-help guide and the Marshall Plan, a recovery aid program by United States to help those devastated by the second world war. In the kit, “Korea is offering these countries a neat little package containing funding, nation-building experts, and strategies — the centerpiece of which is the advice that all countries build government-funded research and policy institutes whose sole purpose is to carry the country from third-world to first-world status.” What will South Korea gain from this kit? Respect and trust. With this kind of relationship, South Korea has established a bond with these countries who have already been sold on “Korea the Brand”.
A HIGHLY INFLUENTIAL MIDDLE POWER
The Korea Foundation, in cooperation with the Foreign Ministry, has released statistics regarding the impact of hallyu by studying in 98 countries. In 2019, there were 100 million more fans than in 2018. There are 1,799 hallyu fan clubs totalling to 99.32 million fans with 72 million in Asia and Oceania, 15 million in Europe, 12 million in the Americas. The most followed clubs were K-Pop acts, with BTS and Blackpink as the top acts, followed by Korean dramas (Kim 2020). These statistics prove that South Korea has definitely become a “content power” as wished by President Roh.
Public diplomacy is an efficient tool for middle powers to avoid being dependent on and being sandwiched by superpowers. Hallyu has become an effective instrument for public diplomacy. Korea Foundation President Lee Geun considers the phenomenon to be an important asset (Kim 2020). Moreover, Huat (in Kim 2012 p 539) notes hallyu as “a representative success story of Korean public diplomacy in the past decade.” Huat’s remark supplements Suntikul’s (2019) statement that cultural diplomacy must not only be focused in promotion as an end; but it must also “be seen in the context of program of development, dialogue, and education that affects minds and perceptions.”
The three-part series studied how the South Korean government has included hallyu in its policymaking for development, and how it has been used as a comparative advantage in international relations. The series used the concepts of Quessard (2020) in understanding music as a diplomatic tool, and Goff (2013) in learning more about diplomatic strategies. In the first article, where we discussed connection and soft power, we understood how K-pop has been applied in the realm of diplomacy following the utilisation of German Kultur to gain ascendancy in America and Jazz music to promote American culture where communism is strong. The second article, which examined consistency in maintaining relationships and nation branding, delved into the hallyu ecosystem– a brand that has resulted from the shared efforts between the South Korean government and private companies. In this concluding article, we explored how hallyu has strengthened the image of South Korea in terms of tourism, economic development, and influence. Indeed, South Korea has long moved on from its image of a poverty-stricken, war-torn country. It is now perceived as a global entertainment leader and a highly developed country.
Special thanks to Wallea Eaglehawk of Revolutionaries
References
Gilboa, E. (2016). Digital diplomacy. In The SAGE handbook of diplomacy (pp. 540–551). SAGE.
Goff, P. (2013). Cultural Diplomacy. In The Oxford Handbook of Modern Diplomacy (pp. 324–336). Oxford University Press. DOI:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199588862.013.0024 2013
Hong, E. (2014). The birth of Korean cool: How one nation is conquering the world through pop culture. Picador.
Huijgh, E. (2016). Public diplomacy. In The SAGE handbook of diplomacy (pp. 437–450). SAGE.
Kim, J. (2020). K-pop, hallyu continue global rise. Korea Times. Retrieved June 22, 2020, from https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2020/01/356_281957.html
Kim, T. (2012). Paradigm shift in diplomacy: A conceptual model for korea’s “new public diplomacy”. Korea Observer, 43(4), 527–555. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.sl.nsw.gov.au/login?url=https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.sl.nsw.gov.au/docview/1281856255?accountid=13902
Lee, S. J. (2011). South Korean soft power and how South Korea views the soft power of others. In Public diplomacy and soft power in East Asia (pp. 139–161). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230118447
Quessard, M. (2020). Entertainment Diplomacy. In Global Diplomacy: An introduction to theory and practice (pp. 279–296). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28786-3_21
Suntikul, W. (2019, March 1). BTS and the global spread of Korean soft power. The Diplomat. Retrieved June 22, 2020, from https://thediplomat.com/2019/03/bts-and-the-global-spread-of-korean-soft-power/
Tyler, M. C., & Beyerinck, C. (2016). Citizen diplomacy. In The SAGE handbook of diplomacy (pp. 521–529). SAGE.
Williamson, W. F. (2014). Opening up thinking space for improvised collaborative public diplomacy. In Music and diplomacy from the early modern era to the present (pp. 251–266). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137463272
