In the last few years, Korean films, TV dramas and pop music have become immensely popular abroad, a phenomenon known as the Korean Wave. This is the 27th in a series of essays by a select group of scholars and journalists looking at the spread of Korean pop culture in Southeast Asian countries and beyond. - Ed.
Media and policy makers are giddy over what Korean entertainers have achieved in Asia in the past 10 years.
Superficially, at least, there is plenty of optimism floating around here about the future of the Korean Wave, or "Hallyu" - more and more Korean singers and actors are targeting overseas markets from the very beginning, while top Hallyu stars continue to rule Asia.
From a different angle, however, Korean stars' increased sense of presence in Asia also reflects their ongoing struggles to survive the current crisis of the local entertainment market. This is why Lee Soo-man, founder and producer of the now 12-year-old SM Entertainment, has a somewhat gloomy outlook regarding the future of the Korean Wave.
"The local pop music market almost doesn't exist now, with only a few albums selling over 100,000 copies a year, and the pervasive practice of illegal downloading of films and songs is making the matter worse", Lee said in an interview with The Korea Herald. "What is big in Japan is also big in Asia, and what is big in Korea has a good chance of becoming a winner in the Japanese market, but the collapse of the local pop music market deprived us of our testing grounds". Having been a popular singer and show host himself throughout the '80 and '90, Lee successfully renewed his career when he founded the local entertainment giant with seminal boy band H.O.T'.s sensational debut back in 1996.
In fact, Lee's production house has been the most successful pop-idol factory in all of Asia during the past few years. Many of the pop stars leading the Korean Wave such as
Boa, TVXQ (also known as Tong Vfang Xien Qi or Dong Bang Shin Ki), Super Junior and most recently, Girl's Generation (Sonyeo Sidae) were all discovered and nurtured by SM. Their music has been transformed into a competitive cultural commodity.
Like
Boa, 22, who has sold over 10 million copies of her albums in Japan since 2001, each of them strategically planned to satisfy the varying tastes of young pop music fans. In a 2004 briefing to President Roh Moo-hyun, the company said that
Boa alone had produced about $100 million worth of both tangible and intangible profits in and outside of Korea.
"SM has experimented with the combination of dance music with swing or soul, which has never been big in the history of Japanese pop music. Through these efforts, we have come up with a unique music style that can be called 'K-pop'. Culture is not something that can be developed in isolation, and the same goes for pop music", Lee said.
Although his entertainment powerhouse is not involved as much in the film industry as it is in the pop industry, Lee expressed serious concern about the effects of illegal downloading on the country's film industry.
"Film producers and investors often take financial risks to make good films because there is a DVD market. But illegal downloading has killed that market". According to Lee, the issue is more serious here than in China, the country once notorious for massive copyright infringement. As systems are getting better in China, the once well-established market here has suddenly gone cold.
To improve the overall competitiveness of Korean television dramas, Lee argued that the cost of a TV commercial, which is currently fixed, regardless of the popularity of a program, should be left to the invisible hand of the market. "Who in God's name is going to invest more to improve the quality of a soap opera if they ends up getting the same amount of money whether it's popular or not?"
Lee believes that Korean soap operas could be nearly as competitive in the entertainment world are as the almost-ubiquitous U.S. television series, if only there were a proper incentive to attract creative talent to produce good dramas at good prices in Asian market.
In his previous interview with The Korea Herald in 2006, Lee said he expected that China would grow to have the biggest entertainment market in Asia in a few years. "The biggest star always comes from the biggest market, and, thus, the Asian market will become the most important source of the world's top entertainers, as it includes China, which will be a 'future Hollywood'."
He still holds on to this belief. "Changes taking place in the Chinese market are moving far faster than I expected. We still have a know-how in star management that China doesn't have, so we have to work to bring the benefits to Northeast Asia by collaborating with Japanese capital and Chinese human resources".
On Monday, Lee gave a lecture on the future of Asian entertainment to 22 students from the MIT Sloan School of Management at the headquarters of SM Entertainment in Apgujeong-dong, southern Seoul. The talk was part of the students' field trip to Korea, through which potential future global business leaders meet with the country's leading political and business figures.
Also attending the one-hour-long lecture were celebrities under the company's management, including members of Girl's Generation and boy band Super Junior and actress
Lee Yeon-hee. After the lecture, the students joked with the stars on the stage, and took photos together.
During the lecture, Lee emphasized that "made by Korea" should be more important than "made in Korea", in what he calls "the third stage of Hallyu".
He explained that the first stage was initiated and led by Korean cultural content and artists born in Korea, such as the defunct H.O.T. and
Boa, while the second one came when local agencies turned their eyes to neighboring markets - China and Japan - to make their talent and content big in Korea and elsewhere in Asia.
"In the third stage, Korea, Japan and China will exert control over the global entertainment market through their cooperation", he said. In that case, "made by Korea" should be more important than "made in Korea".
By Lee Yong-sung
