Hallyu: Korean Wave

Before you read: some questions to help you think about the topic and the words you might need.

What do you know about the Korean Wave?

What do foreigners from Asia, Europe, North America, other places know about the Korean Wave?

A saying now widely used to talk about the popularity of Korean entertainment and culture across Asia and other parts of the world, Hallyu or the “Korean Wave” first became popular during the mid-1990s after Korea entered into diplomatic relations with China in 1992.  And Korean TV dramas and pop music became very popular in Chinese-speaking areas. When one of the first successful TV dramas, What Is Love?, was played on television by CCTV in 1997, it had a t.v. popularity rating of 4.2%, meaning that over 150 million Chinese viewers watched it.

Korean pop music, especially dance music, began to become very popular among Chinese teenagers after it was introduced in earnest in 1997 by a radio program called Seoul Music Room broadcast from Beijing. The important moment that changed things or ignited Korean pop culture excitement in China was the concert of Korean boy band H.O.T., held at the Beijing Workers' Gymnasium in February 2000. Korean news reports used the word Hallyu, or the Korean Wave, to describe this concert. The Korean Wave, word was used in an article published by Beijing Youth Daily as early as November 1999 and so began to finally be recognized by Koreans themselves from that time.

“Gangnam Style” by Psy. The Psy’s “Gangnam Style” took the world by storm with the horse riding dance. It became the first K-Pop title to be in the top of the UK Official Singles Chart Top 40 in 2012. The song also spent seven weeks at the #2 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

The Korean Wave landed in Japan in 2003 when the KBS TV drama series Winter Sonata was played on t.v. via NHK. The drama became an instant mega hit, making its male hero, Yon Sama, a household name, compelling his excited Japanese fans to visit various film locations, including Namiseom Island, in Korea.

The ‘Korean Wave’ craze has expanded to Korean traditional culture, food, literature and language, creating more and more enthusiasts. According to the latest numbers, there were 987 hallyu-related organizations as of July 2013 with a combined membership of 9 million people.

A big majority of these organizations are K-Pop fan clubs, but recently new groups of people whose interests are more diverse have begun to emerge.

Try to guess the meaning of the words in bold and match them with their closest meaning from the choices in the right. Some of the answers are very close and have similar meaning. The meaning of these words is how they are used in the reading. Some of these words have different meanings in the dictionary depending on how they are used.

 The answers are below the table.