[Guest Column]Understanding golden rules of culture

Hallyu, or Korean Wave, has probably been the biggest buzzword in Korea for the past several years. Because Korean culture has become popular overseas, it seems that Koreans are more widely recognized and their culture more appreciated by foreigners than before. As such, it is understandable that Koreans are proud of Hallyu.

Hallyu can be defined as a sudden, but gradual, craze for Korean pop culture, including television dramas, movies, pop songs and their associated celebrities in East and Southeast Asian countries. After this initial interest in Korean stars and media programming, Asian regional fans` interests now expand to include other aspects of Korean stars, such as language, food, fashion, and some avid fans even visit Korea to pay homage. From this definition, we ascertain one important nature of Hallyu: it is an international cultural phenomenon largely happening in Asia. This prompts an interesting suggestion. We often hear that we are living in globalization age, and we take it for granted that globalization is about U.S. standards, the U.S. way of life, and U.S. cultural dominance in every corner of the world. Given this, Hallyu is then an exceptional case of today`s world. Otherwise, there must be something wrong about our conception of globalization being solely Americanization.

In a sense, Americanization has taken place throughout the last century. In particular, we Koreans experienced the power of U.S. culture in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Once Hollywood film studios were permitted to produce and distribute their films directly in Korea, many Korean film companies had to close their businesses because of their poor market performance even in their homeland. The Korean press at that time often wrote that the Korean film industry was destined to be destroyed. It seemed that U.S. cultural dominance of the world was getting stronger and more solid when new media and information technologies such as satellite TV and internet appeared in a series in the past decade. Therefore, many politicians in developing countries argued that globalization was actually a masked form of cultural imperialism. Malaysia`s former Prime Minister Mahathir and Singapore`s former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew were prime examples of this outcry.

In the meantime, at another corner of the globe some challenge to U.S. cultural hegemony did occur. In Latin America, television drama called "telenovela" has become more popular than its U.S. counterpart. Media and cultural scholars provided a theory of "cultural proximity" to account for this new phenomenon. According to them, audiences tend to prefer culturally similar television dramas to foreign ones if the former acquire high production quality.

And, it was also found that telenovela was popular because it adapted, appropriated, borrowed or imitated conventions and styles of U.S. television drama which the local audiences were already familiar with. Based on this appropriation, telenovela skillfully inscribed Latin American people`s everyday life and meaning into the genre. From these empirical findings, anthropologists and media scholars suggested an important lesson about culture and history. Continuous cultural flow, borrowing and diffusion are the essential nature of culture throughout history. Therefore, globalization is not a new phenomenon; it is not a one-way flow of Americanization. As famous anthropologist Ulf Hannerz said, globalization is about mixing, fusion, hybridization, and creolization. And it has taken place throughout history. In this regard, the famous post-colonialist writer Salman Rushdie also emphatically asked: "Is not melange, adulteration, impurity, pick`n`mix at the heart of culture?"

In terms of Korean film sector, "Shiri" marks the beginning of Hallyu. When the director of the movie pronounced that "Shiri" imitated the style from Hollywood action thrillers, he actually revealed an important truth about culture. In fact, in the mid-1990s when there was a sudden "boom" of Korean culture industry at which many chaebol rushed, such as Samsung Entertainment Group, they had a slogan: "Learn from Hollywood!" Under this banner, the cinema and culture industry introduced more advanced business practices and know-how such as audience research in film production and marketing.

At the same time, Korean government promoted the film industry as a new national strategic industry. The government provided financial support and tax breaks to the industry, and loosened censorship so that filmmakers had more freedom in their expression. In this favorable situation, more talented people entered the culture industries, and production staff made every effort to learn and appropriate advanced techniques in filmmaking.

However, imitation or learning from Hollywood was not all about the success of Korean cinema industry. Their movies successfully connected with Korean audiences` real-life experiences such as nostalgia of the 1970s, or North and South Korean reunification issues. With these successful production formulae, Korean cinema industry churned out a series of blockbusters such as "JSA," "Friends," "Silmido," and "Taegukgi": the brotherhood of war. All these reforms and work eventually led to the renaissance of Korean cinema. One of the benefits about having a strong domestic cultural industry is that it should function as a resource for us to express our own culture.

Now, Korean popular culture is being briskly exported. There are many factors to the success of Korean pop cultural exports. For one, we should not ignore that in the mid-1990s, most Asian countries liberalized their media industries, meaning that they had more TV channels. In order to fill up the new channels, they had to resort to foreign programming. And as of late 1990s, Korean programs were some of the cheapest among international programs available. Once these Asian audiences were exposed to Korean TV shows, they gradually became fans of Korean programs which had not only cultural proximity but also high quality such as What is "Love All About," "All About Eve," "Hotelier," "Autumn Story," "Winter Sonata," "Dae Jang Geum," and so on. Therefore, we can say that Korean popular culture touches the right chord of Asian sentiments such as family values and pure love.

However, reasons for audience consumption are complex. When I interviewed Vietnamese and Chinese people, they answered that there were big differences between their cultures and Korean culture. According to them, they enjoyed Korean popular culture because it provided them with a sort of "vision of modernization." As late runners in economic development, Korea is a good model for them. They pay attention to the fact that Korea successfully implanted Western capitalism, but retains Asian characteristic of business as Korean culture is a mixture of American style and Korean sentiment. So, when Vietnamese watch Korean drama, they sense Korean style of modernization. They dream about their better future through Korean drama.

Recently, there are two worrisome trends regarding Hallyu. First, in a celebratory social mood about Hallyu, many media companies simply pursue excessive commercialization because commercialization has been promoted and justified in the name of national interests. In this environment, cultural forms that are not easily commercially converted are often neglected and therefore, cultural diversity is put in danger. Secondly, there is a backlash against the Korean Wave. Foreigners began to complain that Koreans only appreciate their own stars and cultures without reciprocally importing and enjoying Chinese or Malaysian cultures as well.

This situation is a huge difference from about 15 years ago in Korea. When Korea was suffering from U.S. cultural imperialism, we used to argue that we had a right to protect our own culture from foreign cultural invasion. And we emphasized cultural "diversity" and cultural "coexistence." Although Korean culture industry is relatively stronger now, we should not forget these golden rules of culture. In the same vein, the idea of hybridization teaches us that we have to have a more open-mindedness and tolerance towards others, because our own culture of today could not have been made possible without other cultures` contribution.

Shim Doo-bo is an assistant professor of communications and new media at National University of Singapore. - Ed.