This original post is by Advaita Kala. The writer is the author of Almost Single and wrote the story for the much acclaimed film Kahaani.
It is said that it all started with a TV drama called Winter Sonata, whose theme of love, intrigue, search for identity, good acting and dramatic and engaging plot twists made it a favorite in Japan.
It was an especially poignant victory for the South Koreans as Juno Lee, a producer of Korean films and the curator of Korea Week in Yangon tells me.
Being colonised by the Japanese in 1905 had a deep impact on the South Korean psyche.
It’s what makes them so prone to the creative arts, story telling being the chosen language of expression during the years of oppression.
The success of Winter Sonata and the christening of this phenomenon by Chinese journalists, another former coloniser, as the”Korean Wave” had the South Korean government take a closer look at the impact of their popular culture.
In many ways the South Koreans are the last people to be surprised that Psy’s Gangnam style is the most watched video on YouTube.
It is in many ways a culmination of an arduously pursued policy of introducing the world to South Korean pop culture.
Keen adherents and believers of the Korean wave, which started with television dramas, were waiting for an opportunity to reach the world.
The Internet gave them that chance, helping transcend the boundaries of geography and language.
And these technologically sophisticated people knew that internet popularity is often determined by the relentlessness of fans, who will tweet, re-tweet, watch videos repeatedly to drive the online status of their icons, think Justin Bieber.
Having our own brand of pervasive pop culture, there are many ways in which we will understand this but the global proliferation is of deeper interest.
After all the Korean wave has washed up on our shores, think Manipur, where anti-Indian sentiment has led to a Bollywood ban by the Undergrounds, as insurgent groups are known in Manipur.
South Korean pop music, movies, dramas and fashion are much in demand, filling the void left by Bollywood.
When I was in Kathmandu a few months ago after a period of twenty odd years, I was surprised to note the Korean influence in a space that was once primarily occupied by Bollywood.
Indeed resistance to India in Nepal is acted out by banning our films, as happened only recently when the CPN –Maoists banned Bollywood films as a move to “protect national sovereignty”.
I met a Nepalese movie actress who had a movie releasing that weekend and was grateful to not have the competition.
Personal relief and victories aside, states have used soft power to enhance or diminish presence thereby influence.
Certainly they have accorded it more importance than we do in our every day lives spent in auto suggestion mode.
But there is some dissonance as well when it comes to the state using pop culture as a tool of influence. In Korea there has been some talk of how the government should keep its nose out of it.
The nationalist fervour associated with the addition of Korean to explain the “wave”, has its critics; especially amongst the creative community, who find it limiting with the expectations it places on them.
But can a government stay out when as recently as 2011, the Korean wave contributed $3.8 billion of revenue to the South Korean economy?
It is Juno Lee’s eleventh visit to Myanmar and the pop scene is familiar, one of the featured events is a K-Pop Cover Dance contest, and it is going to be one of the more heavily contested activities of the week.
I ask him, what it is about the Koreans that make them so popular? Relevance Certainly, Japan had its moment of pop culture relevance; till it got a little too weird for the mainstream. K-Pop has managed to navigate this space judiciously.
Juno, who always parenthesizes his responses with an “in my opinion” tells me that Koreans are good at three things, “Drink, Sing Dance. We always drink, so we sing. And while we sing, we dance”.
To hear him speak of it as almost like a national pastime is amusing. And even more interesting, now that they have the world going Gangnam style.
These global dance crazes are not new, remember the three delightfully dapper gentlemen who sang the Macarena, or Ricky Martin in all his “posterior glory”?
There was Jai Ho to a limited extent, bolstered in no small measure by its Oscar winning film.
The genius of AR Rahman is recognised the world over, but where is that annoying little ditty, with a nonsensical hook that we can stake claim on?
As Psy said in an interview, no one has any idea about what he is saying till “sexy girl”.
Certainly Psy is the crest of the second Korean wave that began in the middle of the last decade, this time led by K Pop. But is he the final act?
The Koreans, meanwhile, are already thinking ahead, as Juno corrects me. “Psy isn’t the Korean Wave, he’s the global wave”.
And then he looks at me intently, “He is our Licky Martin”
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