From the dramas ‘Squid Game’ and ‘Hellbound,’ to the supergroup BTS,’ South Korean pop culture garnered admirers from all over the world in 2021, generating anticipation for what the year ahead holds.
According to Yonhap News Agency, the dystopian Korean drama series ‘Squid Game’ has become the most-watched Netflix video of all time, with more than 1.65 billion hours of viewing in the first four weeks after its September debut.
Contestants compete in lethal Korean children’s playground activities for a chance to earn 45.6 billion won ($38.5 million) in prize money in this nine-part series.
Because of the show’s success, its outfits — green tracksuits and black masks — became a Halloween fashion phenomenon in several nations around the world last month. Videos of people enjoying children’s games included in the series have been rapidly spreading on TikTok, a short video social media network primarily used by teenagers.
Then, one day after its release last month, Netflix’s ‘Hellbound,’ a new South Korean fantasy horror series, surpassed ‘Squid Game’ as the most-watched TV show on the platform.
‘Hellbound,’ which depicts social unrest following a series of unexplained supernatural events, topped the service’s global listing of its 10 most popular TV shows for ten non-consecutive weeks before slipping off the list this past Thursday. That day, though, three Korean dramas — ‘Squid Game’ at No. 6, KBS’ historical romance ‘The King’s Affection’ at No. 7, and tvN’s romance ‘Hometown Cha Cha Cha’ at No. 9 — were on the chart.
BTS’s record-breaking success in the K-pop industry continued this year, as its second English-language hit, ‘Butter,’ spent 10 non-consecutive weeks on the ‘Billboard Hot 100.’The South Korean boy band followed it up with two more chart-topping singles, ‘Permission to Dance’ and ‘My Universe,’ a collaboration with Coldplay from the United Kingdom.
The septet won four Billboard Music Awards and three American Music Awards (AMAs), and was nominated for the Grammy Awards for the second year in a row in the best pop duo or group performance category. BTS made history by becoming the first Asian act to win Artiste of the Year at the American Music Awards last month.
Despite the Covid-19 pandemic, the K-pop superstar performed four sold-out concerts at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles between November 27 and December 1, attracting over 200,000 American fans.According to experts, these remarkable triumphs once again shown that Korean pop culture is firmly anchored in the global entertainment business, which has been dominated by the United States for nearly a century.
“In the past, the Korean Wave was just a regional phenomenon in some geographically and culturally adjacent Asian countries,” radio host Kim Young-dae noted. “However, it is now a global phenomenon with no discernible pattern, occurring in countries with vastly different cultural backgrounds, such as the United States, Kazakhstan, and Indonesia.”
“Obviously, Westerners had stereotypes or prejudices about Asians, and they consumed foreign content in the past because of this.” “They thought that foreign content is fun, but it’s very exotic or eccentric,” he said, referencing Psy’s global hit “Gangnam Style” from 2012.
However, in the last three to four years, things have altered to the point that K-pop idol groups are now seen as a new standard of aesthetics or modernism, he noted.