North Korea And South Korea - 3228 Words

Everyone has been touched by the Korean wave in some way, whether it is by having a Samsung phone to eating Korean barbeque at a Korean restaurant. North Americans tend to think that North and South Korea share the same traditions and customs, when in fact they are complete opposites. Going back thousands of years in Korean culture, North Korea and South were just a part of the country Korea. Fast forwarding to the 1950’s the northern part of Korea started to become a communist country. America swooped in and started to shape the southern part of Korea as an ally for the United States and make them a part of the capitalist movement. After the Korean War, Korea became divided into North and South Korea. North Korea became a communist†¦show more content†¦Following the stock market crash, South Korea decided to export its music and television to make revenue from other countries. â€Å"Korea is throwing all of its weight and billions of dollars into making itself the n umber one exporter of pop culture in the world† (Leong). The stock market crash in 1997 left the country economically crippled, forcing the government to request a 57 billion dollar loan from the International Monetary Fund ( IMF). The president of that time, Kim Dae-Jung, began to think of a way that Korea could become different from other countries in order to fix its unstable economy. Kim always was amazed with how the United States made its revenue from films and how The United Kingdom made its money from stage musicals. (Leong) This influenced Kim to use those two countries as benchmarks for creating a pop culture industry for Korea. Kim worked with the notion that in order for other countries to buy into your pop culture, you had to prove to them that your nation was cool. The Hallyu or Korean wave started in southeast Asia and has now started its way to the United States and Europe. Now that it has made a marketing statement in the United States its revenue has gotten e ven higher. Korean pop culture exports have already gone from zero, in the early 1990 s, to 4.6 billion in revenue in 2012 (Hong). Koreans have made much of that revenue from their music and the