South Korea is having a moment. Between the hit Netflix show Squid Game, the chart-topping boy band BTS, and the Academy Award-winning movie Parasite, the country’s culture suddenly seems to be everywhere.
With each allusion to Hallyu—the so-called Korean wave of cultural exports—an invocation of Seoul’s soft power is often not far behind. Unlike hard power, which forces others to follow your wishes, soft power helps you win their support by demonstrating the appeal of your culture and values. That Squid Game and Parasite are an expression of Korean soft power seems to have become an accepted fact. The reality may be more complex.
In the seminal 1990 work in which he coined the term “soft power,” Harvard political scientist Joseph Nye wrote that if a nation’s “culture and ideology are attractive, others will more willingly follow.” The catchy songs of BTS have teens worldwide singing along, but neither Squid Game nor Parasite portrays a society that others might be eager to emulate. Both are bleak depictions of wealth disparity in modern South Korea. In Squid Game, the down-on-their-luck characters compete to the death to win 45.6 billion won ($39 million). After the losers get killed—in a series of increasingly grotesque contests based on children’s games—their organs are harvested for sale on the black market. With more than 111 million views in its first month, the show is Netflix Inc.’s biggest series launch yet.
The impoverished protagonists of Parasite, which won Best Picture at the 2020 Academy Awards, meanwhile, inveigle their way into the lives of a wealthy family across town, brutally clearing out those who stand in their path. South Korea’s previous big hit on the film awards circuit, the 2016 period psychological thriller The Handmaiden, dealt with similar themes, focusing on a con man’s scheme to commit a wealthy heiress to an asylum so he could steal her inheritance.
It’s all a far cry from the classic perceptions of U.S. soft power. Nye wrote of Soviet teenagers who “wear blue jeans and seek American recordings,” and how “Nicaraguan television broadcast American shows even while the government fought American-backed guerrillas.” In theory, Hollywood and the Billboard Hot 100 did just as much to export liberal democracy to the world as the U.S. Marine Corps.
South Korea has made other megahits—its dramas and rom-coms are lapped up across Asia. But the effect of its rising cultural influence may be more economic than ideological. U.S. exports helped sell U.S. values. For Korea, the exports themselves may be enough. It’s not trying to sell its system of government, but it does have
Samsung smartphones,
Hyundai cars, and
Samyang noodles to offer. And in a world of rising trade tensions, convincing China and the U.S. alike to be open to buying your products may be a far more desirable outcome.
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