The Impact of Korean Wave in Japan - Case Study Example

Running Head: THE IMPACT OF “KOREAN WAVE” IN JAPAN Student’s Name: Course Code: Lecture’s Name: Date of presentation: The Impact of “Korean wave” In Japan Over the years, scholars through communication research have concluded that media can influence values, culture and way of life of societies. A nations culture and identity is not only shaped by national news headlines but also by international news coverage, to which the particular nation accesses. The context under which the highly published Korean pop culture gained popularity in Japan can only be transmitted through news frames such as Television broadcast (Eunkyoung, 2008). Frame in this context would refer to the deliberate action of selecting particular aspects of news with perceived reality and transforming them to a more salient communication text and thus filtering and transmitting them in a subjective angle. Korean wave was a phenomenon that was commercially driven and through which the nation used to achieve nationalistic branding approach (Kim, 2006). In the past decade, Korean culture pop has been enjoying broad recognition in Japan. Throughout the 80s and 90s alternative genres of music such as J-pop, rap, and hard rock from either local market in Japan or European and American commercial cultures, had captured the youth in Japan with enthusiasm. As a result of cable network television, Korean wave has been dynamically distributed since early 2000s with thousands films being broadcast in various channels throughout Japan. This drama has attracted a sizeable number of youths in Japan. According to (Erni, 2005), the major reason of attraction is due to “the good physique appearance of the male characters”, beautiful sceneries, sensational lifestyles, and the characters flourishing engagement with the modern living style of big cities. The main driving force of this Korean pop fandom in Japan is the undoubted superb digital knowledge in Japan. (Lewis, (1992) concludes that there has been a rapid user growth in social media which has facilitated the simultaneous, instant and multidirectional flow of K-pop. In the recent times, trans-border electronic communication, for instance, television and radio has evolved at a very fast rate. Also, an associated industry in media programming has been developed in an appealing format in TV drama, broadcast of mass entertainment over innovative electronic media (Ravina, 2000). According to (Entman, 2003), this has been boosted by the lifting of restrictions imposed by Korea on the exchange of popular cultural material with the Japanese. This ban was however, lifted in 1998 (Kim, 2006). By default, Japan is home to technologically sophisticated and dynamic media. This has made the government of South Korea to be careful in exposing their media industry to open competition from Japan so the “Korean Wave” commonly known as “Kanryuu” was a great shocker to the Korean media (Kihei., 2004). “Korean Wave” (“Hallyu” in Korean Language) was created by the Chinese press about a decade ago to refer to the popularity of the pope culture from Korea in China (Lewis, (1992). This cultural boom began with export of drama series from Korean television in late 1990s.Since then Korea has become the new hub in the production of international pop culture, which is consequently being exported not only to Japan and other neighboring nations but also to international markets in Europe, Africa, the Americas and the Middle East (Shin, 2004). Japan probably started being attracted by this “Korean Wave” somewhere in the mid 1990s, probably in 1995. Media presenters started to talk of “Look at Korea”. (Doobo, 2006) deduces that, this was translated as let us get interested at what is going on in Korea for instance, the World Cup which the two nations hosted together in the year 2002. The term “Korean Wave” although may have been conceived in Taiwan in the late 1990s, by the early 2001 it had developed in Japan and did not only refers to the original Korean TV drama, but it referred to the Korean pop music, films and the cult-like enthusiasm that it created (Yang, 2010). In Japan, social media users compose of youths between ages of 18 and 24 years old. This fraction of society constitutes about 40 percent of the share. This group of web users consists of internet savvy digital experts who have created a unique values and attitudes founded on their experiences in the cyber world. Through trans-cultural web pop consumption, there internet users are able to get daily foreign pop content. A study conducted by (Hyun, 2007), revealed that participants in the survey consume and circulate a lot of K-pot cultural products through social media. More evidence of transformation of lifestyle in Japan can be concluded from the time spent by K- pop fans in Japan during their online ventures. Hyun, 2007) revealed that 61 percent of the respondents said that they spend over 6 hours online per day. About 30 percent of them spent over 10 hours of their time daily on the internet (Baek 2005). A demographic study showed that majority of locals embraced positively some of the dramas for instance the Winter Sonata; from, 2004 with the peak popularity being recorded in 2005. Staring characters became celebrities in Japan evident as to how they were mobbed during their tour visits in Japan (So, 2006). Winter Sonata labels and merchandise created a multimillion dollar business entity in Japan, dealing with promotional memorabilia such as jewellery, stationery, clothes and fun club base. The entity has grown beyond these entertainment programs towards general Korean interest. Major stores have established “Korean corners” purposely show casing Kanji kan (Korean mark of quality) items (Yoo, 2010). This wave however, had a remarkable positive impact on tourism back at home. In the 2004, tourists from Japan accounted to more that 50 percent of the 5.6 million overseas visitors, though it was quite unclear who were coming in order to visit the location sites of winter Sonata. Seiko Yasumoto of the University of Sydney showed that the effect of Korean Wave was not the same across the Japanese society. He examined the receptive mode of the different categories by using the “Miura’s Categorization theory” (Pravattiyagal, 2011). The theory seeks to classify the Japanese women as per their different social criteria such as education level, wealth, income, careers etc. the criterion also categorized the women according to their ability to support life, work ethics, and learing motivation. The five categorized were obtained as follows: Oyome-Kei,-married women with high standard of living, Mirioneze-kei, -women in specialized careers, such as doctors, lawyers etc Kamayatsuonna-kei, - often technical college graduates dealing in jobs like fashion design, street musicians. Gyaru-kei- are mostly high school graduates and “young married”. OL-Kei- are office ladies who fit in either of the above categories (Onishi, 2005). A closer scrutiny of the general Japanese demographics reveals that Winter Sonata as part of the “Korean Wave”; shows that the drama was not popular in all the age groups and genders. (Yoo, 2010), concluded that the typical viewers’ brackets of the popular movie were mostly women of age between 40 and 50 years, with the average age being 47.3 years. Actually according to a Winter Sonata fun base in Goo website, 97 percents of respondent’s funs were indeed women. According to Han (2011)., the occupation statistics indicate that majority of the women in this 40 and 50 year old age bracket are domestic women. This means that majority of women who are Winter Sonata fans were indeed “Oyeme-kei” i.e. housewives. It is understand since during their marriage time, they were expected to make household work their ultimate careers upon getting their children (Shin, 2004). When their children grow up these women often find adequate free time to engage in leisure activities such as watching Winter Sonata episodes and other dramas that were provided by the “Korean Wave”. Miura Categorization still goes ahead to term this group members as “ambitious for affluent style” and could never been satisfied during the economic crisis of the 1990s ((Han, 2011). In other words, it seems like Winter Sonata was created as a hope to satisfy the needs of the Oyome- Kei market. This was achieved through the collection of characters, choice of location and a successful plot that was captivating to certain demographic market and thus meeting their entertainment needs (Hyun, 2007). Respondents collected from Goo websites, newspaper articles, magazines and other sources have been used to weigh both the “pro” and “anti” reaction by Japanese concerning the abrupt influence by Korean popular culture. From 2005 there has been a remarkable change as politics take the centre stage by obscuring the “pro” sentiments of the supports with a stronger prominence on the unsettled political disagreement, a trend that seems to be “picking fire”. According to the statistics by White paper; a Japanese government paper, suggested that the effect of the Korean Wave Dramas, popular culture and the created cult was not significant until year 2005 (Cho, 2005). A survey carried out on a sample of the local Japanese population showed that about 50 percent felt that they were closer and friendlier to Korea as a result of the Korean wave influence, 43 percent were felt somehow close, with only 13 percent giving a negative respondent (Ryoo, 2007). “Source: Http//www.nrc.co.jp/rep/pdf/rep20050815_01_pdf” Although the “Korean Wave” dramas and popular culture had a great impact in Japan, these effects were not uniform but were more pronounced on a specific demographic grouping- the housewives- Oyomei- kei. In order to fully understand the influence of the Korean Wave in the height of historical tension between the two nations, it is crucial to consider the global television industry growth (Hills, 2002). Although a relatively new player in the communication industry, it is worth noting that it still carries a lot of weight due to its nature of dealing with popular program demands fuelled by the business behind it. With the help of interpreters and with the lifting of the border restrictions, television have become independent from single language and thus being able to be imported and exported with ease (Yoo, 2010).). The other point worth considering is the development of television dramas such as “soap opera” which highlight on universal themes and thus capable of attracted a large audience and thus being able to generate huge revenue returns (Entman, 2003). The capital input in this industry is huge as production companies need to install the necessary infrastructure such as masts, broadcast satellites and so on, this means in order to fully recover this investment; they need to be innovative with ideas that will pull viewers in large numbers for them to breakeven (Doobo, 2006). The third factor is the trend of the production companies creating ideas in form of programs that do not just appeal the local nationals but rather capturing transnational media market (Hyun, 2007). For instance the success of programs in the “Korean Wave” such as Winter Sonata clearly shows how drama can create viewing bases across borders and more so in diverse language societies in the regions by championing for common cultural values and structures (Cho, 2005). Although the Korea has been very successful in television programs both in and out of Korean borders, it is worth noting that there were other waves that preceded this Korean one. There was the Japanese wave which was also preceded by the lucrative “soap operas” shot for television industry in majority of the countries (Walker, 2003). According to Erni, (2005), The success of the Korean Wave drama in Japan and other regions of Asia signify how global broadcasting and television industry has established the platform in the last half century for cross border and indeed universal communication that was just a dream earlier before. (Eunkyoung, 2008) concludes that the selective impact of Winter Sonata in Japan indicates how such wave will have a selective impact in the intended market. The effect and impact of any communication material and program on local population is a direct relation of how such programs area interacting with the cultural frames (Walker, 2003)). The final conclusion remark of this paper is that the full effect of transnational TV within the genre of Korean wave will only have a significant impact if the programming is reviewed to satisfy the larger fraction of both male and female demography. References Cho, H. (2005). Reading the "Korean Wave" as a sign of Global Shift; Korean Journal , 1.5. 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