South Korea has long been known for its manufacturing prowess, but the Netflix hit Squid Game is taking the country’s cultural clout to another level that augurs well for a new driver of economic growth.
While Korean pop acts and TV dramas have been scoring hits overseas for years, only a handful — boy band BTS, for example — have managed to win many fans outside of Asia. Squid Game, set to become the most-watched show worldwide on Netflix, is changing all that.
Building on the success of last year’s Oscar-winning film Parasite, the new Netflix show about indebted people fighting in a deadly survival game has caught the global mood and is projecting Korea’s growing soft power. It could also help make the country’s cultural exports into much bigger economic contributors.
Photo: Reuters
Netflix says its business last year added US$1.9 billion to Korea’s economy, but overall the entertainment industry is starting to pull more weight.
ENTERTAINMENT EXPORTS
The size of Korea’s content industry is small relative to the vast manufacturing sector, but has been growing steadily. Content exports totaled US$10.8 billion last year, roughly one tenth of chips — Korea’s main cash cow — but already earning more than some other key export items such as household appliances and cosmetics.
Photo: Reuters
The value of Korea’s entertainment exports, which include publishing, games, music, movies and TV shows, rose 6.3 percent last year even as overall shipments of goods fell 5.4 percent due to the pandemic.
Even consumer products related to the so-called Korean wave, such as cosmetics, clothes and food items, rose 5.5 percent last year, according to a report by the Korea Foundation for International Cultural Exchange.
ATTRACTING TOURISTS
The popularity of Korean soap operas and idol stars led to a surge in Chinese visitors in the years before COVID struck, but that over-reliance has become a vulnerability for the tourism industry.
When relations between the two nations sourced in 2017 over the deployment of the THAAD US missile defense system in Korea, a Chinese ban on tourists to the country sent overall arrivals plunging. That shaved 0.4 percentage points off GDP growth that year.
Among total inbound tourists, 13 percent are estimated to have visited Korea in 2019 specifically for the purpose of experiencing pop culture and attending fan events, with their spending totaling US$2.7 billion that year, according to KOFICE.
Korea’s key challenge is to broaden its visitor base beyond Asia, and the growing appeal of its pop culture aids that mission.
CREATING JOBS
While still small in size, entertainment is one of Korea’s fastest-growing sectors along with technology. The number of workers in creative and artistic services grew 27 percent between 2009 and 2019, while that in manufacturing, a traditional engine for economic growth, increased 20 percent in the same period, according to data from the website of Statistics Korea.
In a report last month, Netflix said it helped create 16,000 full-time jobs in Korea from 2016 to last year across entertainment and related industries. The firm estimates it contributed US$4.7 billion to the economy in the period.
That US assistance was a model for Taiwan’s spectacular development success was early recognized by policymakers and analysts. In a report to the US Congress for the fiscal year 1962, former President John F. Kennedy noted Taiwan’s “rapid economic growth,” was “producing a substantial net gain in living.” Kennedy had a stake in Taiwan’s achievements and the US’ official development assistance (ODA) in general: In September 1961, his entreaty to make the 1960s a “decade of development,” and an accompanying proposal for dedicated legislation to this end, had been formalized by congressional passage of the Foreign Assistance Act. Two
March 31 to April 6 On May 13, 1950, National Taiwan University Hospital otolaryngologist Su You-peng (蘇友鵬) was summoned to the director’s office. He thought someone had complained about him practicing the violin at night, but when he entered the room, he knew something was terribly wrong. He saw several burly men who appeared to be government secret agents, and three other resident doctors: internist Hsu Chiang (許強), dermatologist Hu Pao-chen (胡寶珍) and ophthalmologist Hu Hsin-lin (胡鑫麟). They were handcuffed, herded onto two jeeps and taken to the Secrecy Bureau (保密局) for questioning. Su was still in his doctor’s robes at
Last week the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said that the budget cuts voted for by the China-aligned parties in the legislature, are intended to force the DPP to hike electricity rates. The public would then blame it for the rate hike. It’s fairly clear that the first part of that is correct. Slashing the budget of state-run Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) is a move intended to cause discontent with the DPP when electricity rates go up. Taipower’s debt, NT$422.9 billion (US$12.78 billion), is one of the numerous permanent crises created by the nation’s construction-industrial state and the developmentalist mentality it
Experts say that the devastating earthquake in Myanmar on Friday was likely the strongest to hit the country in decades, with disaster modeling suggesting thousands could be dead. Automatic assessments from the US Geological Survey (USGS) said the shallow 7.7-magnitude quake northwest of the central Myanmar city of Sagaing triggered a red alert for shaking-related fatalities and economic losses. “High casualties and extensive damage are probable and the disaster is likely widespread,” it said, locating the epicentre near the central Myanmar city of Mandalay, home to more than a million people. Myanmar’s ruling junta said on Saturday morning that the number killed had
RSS