(SINGAPORE) All things Korean - from
food and music to eyebrow-shaping and shoe styles - are becoming all the rage across Asia -
where pop culture has long been dominated by Tokyo and Hollywood.
Not long ago, Korea's
best-known cultural export was kimchi, the pickled cabbage and chilli dish known for its fierce,
pungent spiciness.
But now South Korean TV shows, films, pop stars and fashion are even
hotter - or cooler, as Taiwanese TV official Amanda Yang put it as she extolled the 'K-pop'
bands SES and Shinhwa.
'They look like street gangs - so cool that you want to punch
them,' said Ms Yang of Channel TV.
A South Korean TV tear-jerker series, The Autumn
Story, was such a hit in Taiwan last year that fans from there took group tours to the South Korean
city of Sok Cho, about 150 km north-east of Seoul, where the story's imaginary lovers grew up and
met again after years apart. The series ended with the main female character dying of cancer.
In Vietnam, South Korean TV dramas provide the tightly controlled communist country with an
enticing glimpse of the outside world. The shows are so popular that fans sometimes have to
choose between two aired at the same time - on Hanoi's total of four channels.
In the streets
of Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi, fashion-conscious young Vietnamese have adopted the darker
makeup colours, thinly shaved eyebrows, body-hugging clothes and square-toed shoes of Seoul
fashion.
Even in Japan, long Asia's fountain of cool, South Korean pop culture is invading the
airwaves and box office. Japanese media are zooming in on any little bit of Seoul as the two
countries prepare to host the World Cup soccer tournament in June.
Japan's hottest record
label, Avex, has signed distribution deals with several South Korean pop acts including the
five-member boy band Shinhwa and SES, a female trio.
The concept of Koreans as two
warring peoples split by barbed wire and ideology is a recurring theme in Korean films, and seems
to fascinate people across cultures - maybe partly for its analogy of forbidden love.
The film
Swiri, about two spies from North and South Korea who become lovers, was a surprise hit in
Japanese theatres last year.
Joint Security Area, another huge hit in Korea and abroad, depicts
tension and friendship among four South and North Korean guards at the truce village of
Panmunjom, which straddles the north-south frontier - the world's most heavily armed border.
South Korean entertainment has also gained a foothold in Hong Kong, whose mass-produced
films and Cantonese pop music have been staple exports to the rest of Asia.
Now, Hong
Kong's tabloid magazines feature South Korean movie stars and singers, and Dicky Tsang of the
city's POV Square bookshop says sales of South Korean video CDs have surged by about 30 per
cent this year.
Despite Hong Kong's reputation as a shopping mecca, some of its residents are
now making forays into South Korea's malls and markets.
The Chinese are talking about
'hanguo re' - literally, Korea fever. Walk into a Beijing fast food restaurant and you're likely to
see a South Korean boy band warbling and dancing on a TV screen.
'In the 1980s, it was
Japanese, Taiwanese and Hong Kong singers and movies, but now Korea is the thing,' said Zhang
Jianhua, owner of a Beijing video and music shop.
Korean pop culture is seen as fresh and
edgy, but non-threatening because 'they're Asian and they look like us', Mr Zhang says. 'So it's
easy to identify with them.'
Sociologist Habib Khondker agrees. The Korean fad is part of a
region-wide 'reassertion of Asian identity', he said.
'It's kind of a pan-Asianism . . . You can
look for alternative cultures, not necessarily European or American,' said Mr Khondker, a
university teacher in Singapore, the latest country to be hit by Korea fever.
Korean restaurants
are surging in popularity in the food-obsessed city, and Korean TV dramas have become all the
rage in the past few months.
There is an economic element as well. Asia was hit by a harsh
financial crisis in 1997, and is now struggling with the global economic downturn.
'Korean
songs, TV dramas and films are very competitive in costs', making a challenge to Japanese fare,
said Kim Hee Teck, counsellor at the South Korean Embassy in Singapore.
South Korean
films are more popular simply because they are improving, said Philip Cheah, director of the
Singapore International Film Festival. One of the best is Joint Security Area, he said. 'It's very
polished, and it's very entertaining,' said Mr Cheah, who sits on film festival juries around the
world. - AP <a href="mailto:biztimes@asia1.com.sg?subject=Korea fever rages in Asia">Feedback</a>
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