Technology holds the key to K-culture’s success

To strengthen competitiveness of K-culture, we must grasp the newly unfolding situation and lead the convergence of contents and digital technology.

Choi Doo-hwan

The author is a former president of KT and former CEO of Posco DX. Fortune, an economics magazine in the United States, cited two factors as the key reasons behind the success of “K-culture.” From a technical point of view, social media services were used very wisely. From the perspective of subjects, K-culture won sympathy from all cultures, the magazine said.

First, let’s look into the use of the social media technology. Before the great success of BTS, J.Y. Park and Bang Si-hyuk knocked on the door of the Western pop music market by promoting the Wonder Girls and Rain, they were not very successful. It wasn’t because the standard of the K-pop music was low nor because consumers did not like them. It was because the powerful intermediary who controlled the Western music market had not supported K-pop, and the opportunity for K-pop to be introduced to consumers was restricted.

But starting with BTS, intermediaries were skipped and K-pop artists attempted to make direct contacts with consumers through social media services such as YouTube. The role of the intermediaries, therefore, became weak and the people started to love K-pop. The newly emerged digital technology played an important role in K-pop’s remarkable success.

Let’s look into the perspective that K-pop had won sympathy from all cultures. Subjects that are difficult for consumers from other cultures to sympathize with are likely to be far from popular, even if they were expressed well. For the success of K-culture, popularity that can be empathized with by the rest of the world is more important than its artistry. K-culture expressed that popularity pretty well.

The two success factors of K-culture are “digital transformation” and “convergence scalability,” when expressed in the language of business management. By using digital technology, contents distribution business models can be transformed digitally and they can make direct contacts with consumers without intermediaries. By presenting topics that are universally sympathized with in all cultures, cultural convergence can be achieved and consumer scalability can be expanded.

As culture is relative, it is meaningless to argue that K-culture is superior to others. The important thing is that K-culture will maintain its competitive edge in popularity in the future. How can it be done? Now, the world is being changed into an era where physical world and virtual world coexist. Generation MZ, who will be the main axis of the world in the future, will spend as much time in the virtual world as in the real world.

If so, social media services, which enabled direct contacts with consumers in the real world, won’t be enough. We need to find a way to smoothly contact consumers in the virtual world. To this end, K-culture must be an active agent in the cultural metaverse, where the Gen MZ from around the world will use it as if it were their own homes. Inside the cultural metaverse, we should easily contact and communicate with anyone from around the world. Artificial intelligence technologies, such as ChatGPT, will make it possible. Content should be enjoyed and owned freely. Blockchain technologies such as NFTs also make it possible. It means that digital technologies such as metaverse, AI and NFTs are essential to maintain lasting popularity of K-culture.

Digital technology is also important to express themes sympathized by the Gen MZ from around the world in ways they agree with. If we try to maintain such sympathy only with Korean characteristics, K-culture will soon hit its limit. For lasting popularity, cultural convergence must take place so that the MZ generation from around the world will treat K-culture as their own and comfortably participate in creating contents. Digital technology has the answer. We must make them play inside the metaverse of K-culture, communicate with Gen MZ of Korea and participate in creating K-culture contents. That way, we can gain more sympathy from them.

Production, consumption and trading of digital contents will be significantly different in the future from the current practices with analog contents. Production will be done by linking meta data, consumption will be done by customizing AI, and transaction will be done by NFTs. Such a dramatic change was predicted, but it is a path no one has taken yet. Moreover, it is a path that content creators alone cannot handle.

Korea must lead the way of this new path. If Korea’s contents and digital specialists join forces to develop a new digital contents platform for the digital contents industry, K-culture will be unsurpassed in terms of its lasting popularity. Digital technology, which once seemed unrelated to cultures, will play a crucial role in K-culture’s lasting popularity. In order to strengthen competitiveness in this area, we must grasp the newly unfolding situation and lead the convergence of contents and digital technology.

Translation by the Korea JoongAng Daily staff.