K-Kraze: How The Korean Wave Conquered The World

ౠIn the crowded dining hall of Korea University, Mi-rae (Im Soo-hyang) is pushed by Chan-woo (Oh Hee-joon) for rejecting his feelings. She trips in slow motion and graciously lands on Kyung-seok (Cha Eun-woo) avoiding an embarrassing fall. The background score plays:

Something in your eyes

Tell me who I am

Something in my highs

Whenever you’re near.

This scene from My ID is Gangnam Beauty (2018) captures the idea of a typical Korean drama. The rom-coms were a craze worldwide. Until 2021. The release and global success of the Netflix television series Squid Gameജ altered the compartmentalisation of K-dramas—that they are rom-coms catering primarily to female audience—forever.

Squid Game𝓀 is based on traditional Korean games with death as a consequence of losing. “Its raw themes of inequality and survival struck a chord worldwide, while its distinctly Korean backdrop made it stand out,” says Guydeuk Yeon, director, Centre for Korean Studies, Christ University, Bengaluru. “The show proved that K-dramas could tackle heavy, universal issues without losing their cultural identity. Its success opened doors for other K-dramas to find international platforms and audiences,” he adds.

Inspired by Netflix’s success, other major platforms started not only streaming but also creating original K-dramas. The popular releases of 2024 show how the diversification of genre is maintained. Marry My Husband is a do-over revenge tragedy and time-travel fiction starring Park Min-young, who witnesses her husband cheating on her with her best friend right before her death. She is sent back in time to before she was married, with the hope of changing her fate. Death’s Game is a mystery thriller featuring Parasite⭕ (2019) fame Park So-dam in the role of Death itself. Light Shop is a mystery horror that follows a group of strangers coping with tragic past experiences. Each of them is mysteriously brought to a light shop that connects the dead and the living.

The Global Appeal of K-Dramas

The popularisation of K-dramas on international platforms is not a solitary phenomenon. In the US, their distribution and circulation dates back to the 1970s. Anthropologist Kyeyoung Park in her book The Korean American Dream: Immigrants and Small Business in New York City💞 (1997) traced how greengrocers—fruit and vegetable businesses—rented VHS tapes lacking subtitles, keeping K-dramas within the Korean community.

By 1983, Korean Broadcasting System (KBS), the national broadcaster of South Korea, established a TV station in Los Angeles. In the book Hallyu 2.0: The Korean Wave in the Age of Social Media🍰 (2015), Sangjoon Lee and Abé Markus Nornes explain that K-dramas spread beyond the diaspora community in America with the establishment of YA Entertainment in 2003, the first distributor outside of the Korean diaspora media.

By the time these systems were fully established in the West, K-dramas had begun gaining popularity across Asia from the early 2000s. The star-crossed lovers’ tale Winter Sonata (2002) became a major hit in Japan. The ‘Korea Herald’ reported that when the actor from the drama Bae Yong-joon visited Japan in 2004, 6,000 women had gathered at the Tokyo airport to catch a glimpse of him. Full House (2004), starring K-pop star Rain and The Glory (2022-2023) fame Song Hye-kyo, and Coffee Prince (2007), featuring Train to Busan♉ (2016) actor Gong Yoo also found widespread acclaim in Taiwan, Singapore and China.

Jewel in the Palace𓆏 (2003), an inspiring story of the first female royal physician of the Joseon dynasty, travelled to India as Ghar ka Chirag in 2007. The show aired on DD National, broadcasting once a week.

ꦇWhile K-dramas gained traction in the US and Asia through distribution and adaptations, their emotional appeal among women became the defining feature of their global rise. “K-dramas appeal to me because they are an escape from the jarring reality of being a woman today,” says Eva Paraskevi, an avid K-drama watcher from Greece. “In real life, I have to second-guess every interaction I have with a man, even with the ones that I am close with. Sometimes I just want to see a story about two people falling in love where the woman isn’t the object, and the men are just dependable and respectable. I don’t even really want to call it the female gaze because it’s just asking for the bare minimum,” she adds.

The Korean Wave & ‘Flower Boys’

💃The Hallyu (Korean) wave may have peaked over recent years, but the term was coined in 1999 by journalists at Beijing Youth Daily— the most widely circulated metropolitan newspaper in Beijing. The seed of globalisation was sown further back in 1992, believes J. E. Hoare, historian and professor at SOAS University of London. He explains South Korea’s investment in cultural industries by offering subsidies and tax incentives to ensure high production values, expanding global distribution networks and tourism campaigns were “all part of the ‘globalisation’ programme under President Kim Yong-sam, whose aim was to get the Republic of Korea to diversify from its traditional dependence on heavy industry, such as ship and car manufacturing”.

The blossoming of these strategies was seen with Boys Over Flowers꧅ in 2009. The show is based on the Japanese manga of the same name, which had already been adapted in Japan and Taiwan. However, the Korean adaptation coincided with the birth of the legal streaming website DramaFever. Around the same time, Viki, another platform was also launched. The platforms may have accelerated the show’s popularity, but it was the introduction of kkonminam (Flower Boys) that truly set the show apart.

As the opening theme, ‘Almost Paradise’💎, plays. Four men appear—Gu Jun-pyo (Lee Min-ho), with permed hair, accessorised with neckties, bow ties, and scarves; Yoon Ji-hoo (Kim Hyun-joong), with brown, straightened hair and a soft-spoken demeanour; So Yi-jung (Kim Bum), a skilled potter and well-dressed like the rest; and finally, Song Woo-bin (Kim Joon), leaner than the others and farthest from the rugged look that women were used to seeing on screen.

“The ‘flower boy’ concept describes men who are stunningly handsome, polished, and have a gentle, softer masculinity. It’s a refreshing contrast to the rugged, traditional male archetypes,” explains Yeon. “When Boys Over Flowers🌜 brought this idea into the spotlight, it quickly became a trend in K-dramas and K-pop, making it a hallmark of Korean entertainment. The appeal lies in this mix of charm, sensitivity, and charisma, which feels fresh and relatable to modern audiences,” he adds.

Prolonged Close-Ups and Slo-Mos

♊The emphasis on emotional appeal also connects to another key feature of K-dramas—the use of ‘affective interludes,’ as theorised by Steve Choe, an associate professor in the School of Cinema at San Francisco State University, and a K-drama expert. These are moments in the drama that boldly showcase a private emotion, such as nostalgia, romance, despair, gratitude, or bliss while prompting viewers to feel something—such as sympathy, outrage, joy, or even cringe—making them memorable and ultimately hooking the audience.

𓄧In Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok-joo (2016), when Kim Bok-joo (Lee Sung-kyung) and Jung Joon-hyung (Nam Joo-hyuk) shared romantic moments such as their date in the amusement park, where Jung slipped his hand into Kim’s pocket so they could hold hands while watching the fireworks at play, the close-up shot of Jung’s smiling face in contrast to Kim’s surprised and slightly embarrassed face forces the viewer to feel something with the characters. This is then doubled with ‘Dreaming’ playing as the background score. This same background score also plays, when Jung confesses that he likes Kim and kisses her. Now, anytime somebody plays this music, the viewer is taken back to the romantic moments of the show specifically.

Similarly, in Goblinܫ (2016), when Kim Shin (Gong Yoo) and Wang Yeo (Lee Dong-wook) go to rescue Ji Eun-tak (Kim Go-eun) in Episode 2, both supernatural creatures, with their tall and strong builds, are shown walking in slow motion while ‘Round and Round’ plays in the background. This scene is referred to within the show in Episode 10 by Ji, who calls their walk ‘very cool’, leading Kim and Wang to recreate it to experience it for themselves again, thereby imprinting the emotions that the audience felt, with the added layer of humour. Now, this scene lives rent-free in people’s minds.

The BTS Craze

Goblin (2016) is considered a Korean wave in itself, as the popularity of the show helped K-dramas continue to gain a larger audience. The year 2018 was a pivotal moment for K-dramas—the streaming platform DramaFever shut down, and at the same time, Netflix created its first original K-drama, Mr. Sunshineꦏ, forever opening K-drama to a new era of accessibility.

༺The same year also marked the golden era of K-Pop, with BTS becoming the first South Korean group to grace the cover of TIME magazine after topping the American Billboard music charts and selling out stadiums in the US. They were also invited to the UN General Assembly for the launch of Generation Unlimited, a partnership to get every young person into quality education, training, or employment by 2030.

𝓰This blending of their popularity with social work highlights what sets them apart as a K-pop group. The boy band has an underdog story and does not belong to the ‘Big 3’ entertainment agencies—SM, YG, and JYP. Their songs addressed mental health challenges, societal pressure, and the rigidity surrounding traditional career expectations: Okay, the boring same day, every day just repeats/Adults and parents cram us with dreams stuck in place/The No. 1 dream job, a government employee?/The dream wasn’t forced, a relief pitcher in the bottom of the ninth.

𒀰Their goodwill and social messaging aside, BTS operated with curated public personas typical of K-pop groups. Each of the members has a strikingly different personality from the others—Suga is the grumpy one, RM is the brains of the group, and Jin is the goofy one. This ‘authentic’ self is shared regularly with their community of fans, called ARMY, via apps like Weverse and V-Live, where they post updates or go live for audience members to join and interact via comments.

K-Pop and the Flip Side

💫The creation of K-pop groups goes back to the 1997 IMF crisis when the government began investing in cultural exports as a strategy for economic recovery, focusing on the Hallyu wave.

The SM Entertainment Group created H.O.T., which is now known as the first K-pop idol group. Moon Hee-joon, Jang Woo-hyuk, Tony Ahn, Kangta and Lee Jae-won were selected based on their diverse personalities after they had gone through rigorous training. Their debut single, “Candy⛦”, was a massive hit, leading them to perform alongside Michael Jackson in Seoul. This formula for creating K-pop groups was then mimicked across the industry due to the boy band’s success.

꧟The origins of K-pop as a musical genre, however, go further back to Seo Taiji and Boys, who debuted in 1992. Korea had just democratised in 1987, coming out of an almost decade-long authoritarian rule by President Chun Doo-hwan.

ಞYeon believes the 1980s democratisation then led to “creative freedom flourishing and cultural industries thriving.” Unlike the curated idol groups that followed, Seo Taiji and Boys revolutionised Korean pop music by blending it with American hip-hop. They paired this new sound with choreography and a rebellious, anti-establishment image: It got bigger and bigger/The anger that blamed this society/Eventually turned into hatred/Truths disappeared, at the tip of my tongue.

🐲Hoare attributes the early American influence in K-pop—and the subsequent fascination with its Americanisation—to South Korea’s history as a military colony until 1945. He explains: “There were US military bases all over the country, which played a major cultural role. It was not until the late 1990s that popular Japanese culture was widely accepted again. Older generations, educated in Japanese, could read and speak the language, but younger people had little exposure to it.”

Rain, BoA and Se7en were hailed as ambassadors of Korean culture. All three of them moved to the US between 2006 and 2009 to break into the market, with Rain finding the most luck. Forbes reported, “In 2006, Rain staged the biggest US concerts for Korean artists at the time, sang in Pepsi’s ads for the FIFA 🐼World Cup in Germany, sold over one million albums across Asia, and joined the TIME 100 list as one of the most influential people in the world.” In hopes of replicating the same kind of fame, Girls’ Generation and Wonder Girls also moved to the US from 2009 to 2012 but did not succeed.

In 2012, PSY led the second wave of K-pop to the world before BTS. The comical and easy-to-follow galloping dance, paired with the catchy hook of ‘Oppa Gangnam Styleꦜ’, achieved what his predecessors could not—all while staying in Korea—thanks to the music video was bizarre yet hilarious—perfect for sharing on social media, which skyrocketed its reach across cultures and languages”.

♒There’s, however, a flip side to the entire sensationalism. From recruiting talent to training them, giving them a platform and making them into a craze, artists often go through a lot mentally and emotionally.

🧜The entertainment agencies hold auditions to recruit talent, with some people joining these companies as early as the age of 12 or 13. They are rigorously trained in singing, dancing, and rapping, with a lucky few being selected to debut as a K-pop group—and sometimes, if they are very lucky, as soloists.

🅰The industry has been accused of establishing rigid contracts for artists that dictate their public behaviour. Most of them are not allowed to date publicly. This is how ‘idols’—K-pop artists are referred to as idols in South Korea—are built in the K-pop industry.

🌳While K-pop dazzles the world with its perfection, it often comes at the cost of its artists, as seen in the deaths of idols like Moon Bin of Astro, Sulli of f(x), Goo Hara of Kara, and Jonghyun of Shinee who ended their lives. The picture-perfect shiny exterior, the rehearsed dance moves and the pleasant public appearances make you question the emptiness of groups that show to the world they live, laugh and love together. In contrast, K-dramas offer emotional depth and relatability, creating a space for audiences to connect with stories that feel human and heartfelt. This duality within the Hallyu wave underscores the complexities of the entertainment industry, leaving us to consider not just what we consume, but the humanity behind the art that moves us.