Doobo Shim2003). The globalization of media ironically stimulates hybridization. In order to better under-
stand the relationship between hybridity, globalization, and East Asian popular culture, it is val-
uable to pay close attention to the development of South Korea’s media and the success of the
Korean Wave. South Korea’s relative lack of involvement with international systems of cultural
production and consumption relegated it to the backwaters of global culture for most of the
twentieth century. Since the 1990s, however, South Korea has grown into a regional hub of
popular culture, with hybridity playing an important role in this process.
Korean media development and the Korean Wave
The Korean Wave is partly indebted to globalization in the form of the media liberalization
that swept across Asia in the 1990s. At that time, Korean television dramas began to take up
the expanded airtime that was made available on television channels in China, Hong Kong,
Taiwan, Singapore, Vietnam, and Malaysia, countries which had for the most part adopted
media liberalization measures. In addition, the Asian financial crisis which precipitated Korea’s
1997–1998 bailout by the International Monetary Fund brought about a situation in which
Asian media buyers preferred Korean programs because of their competitive prices; as of
2000, Korean television dramas were a quarter of the price of Japanese dramas, and a tenth
of the price of Hong Kong dramas (Lee 2003). The liberalization of Korea’s domestic media,
which took place from the late 1980s to the mid-1990s, was also a factor in the creation of
the Korean Wave. In fact, we can view the Korean Wave as an outgrowth of Korea’s efforts
to retain its cultural identity as it confronted the threat of being dominated by global media.
Under U.S. pressure, in 1988 the Korean government allowed major U.S. film companies to
distribute their films directly to local theaters in Korea. By 1994, more than ten Korean film
importers had shut down their businesses. Film production companies, which were also run-
ning film importing businesses, were also severely affected: the annual number of local films
produced fell from 121 in 1991 to 63 in 1994. The market share of U.S. films in Korea rose to
80 percent in 1994, up from 53 percent in 1987 (Shin 1995; Yi 1994). Many felt the demise
of Korean film was nearing, which further strengthened the discourse of American cultural
imperialism within Korean society. Taking into account the importance of film as a means of
national cultural expression, the government and the thinking public in Korea also expressed
their concern about this situation.
Ironically, it was a U.S. film that laid the foundation for the revival of the local film industry.
Jurassic Park, which sold out theaters around the world in 1993, inspired awe in both cinemago-
ers and policymakers in Korea. In 1994, the Presidential Advisory Board on Science and Tech-
nology submitted a report to then president Kim Young-sam suggesting that the government
should promote media production as a national strategic industry. The report noted that the
overall revenue (from theater exhibition, television syndication, licensing, etc.) from Jurassic Park
was equivalent to the foreign sale of 1.5 million Hyundai cars (Shim 2002). The comparison of
a film to Hyundai cars (which were then considered the “pride of Korea”) was so striking that it
became a topic of everyday conversation for years afterward. The Korean public had awakened
to the idea of culture as an industry.
Influenced by the report, which emphasized the culture industry’s potential contributions to
the national economy, the Korean government established the Cultural Industry Bureau within
the Ministry of Culture and Sports in 1994 to orchestrate the development of the culture
industry. This was the first such government unit devoted to cultural industry affairs in Korean
history. The government also instituted the Motion Picture Promotion Law in 1995 in order to
lure corporate and investment capital into the local film industry.