After six years of swelling, Vietnam’s still riding the Korean Wave.
After Korea’s uprising at the beginning of the 21st Century brought us Rain, Jewel in the Palace, animated classics like There she is!! and Hip Hop and R n’ B groovers Big Bang, the K wave, dubbed ‘Hallyu’, may now be construed as Old Hat. However, as it was given a five year life expectancy it is a surprise to us all that the South Korean’s are still on top in East Asia and with a growing tourist industry polished to perfection and a growing film industry ranging from gripping horror fear fests through to seedy Rom-Coms Korea have nothing to lose in the race for the prize of popularity.
In 1997 East Asia suffered on enormous International Monetary Fund Crisis and seemed set to fail in their quest to get a foothold on Pop Culture as The United States invited the World to Disney Land to see Britney Spears. Fortunately for the Asian market, South Korea invested their energies in making Asia more accessable by utilising the Globl Networking Agency, the internet, and their fast developing knowledge of the newest electronic technologies in order to whip up a storm not only with the emergence of K-Pop culture here but also with business ventures over in the West. By 2001 Korea were the new big thing with televisual feasts such as Lovers in Paris which captivated the Vietnamese Romantics and Winter Sonata tuning in the Thais it was not long before the whole of East Asia were united by an admiration for the power of the Korean Wave.
In 2001 China had been hit by Koreamania. This symptom, not dissimilar to the 1960s Beatlemania which saw girls swooning over four Liverpuddlians and boys getting replica McCartney haircuts to match their four button, single-breasted jackets, was a sign of things to come and by the end of the year the Samsung Economic Research Institute of South Korea had developed a system to categorise Korea’s performance in their battle to infiltrate Global Culture. The boffins at Samsung came up with the four stages of the Korean Wave which by this time had swept worldwide.
Mexico, Russia and Egypt, at this time, had embraced stage one and were readily consuming and enjoying the bits of Korea that were projected through films, television and internet gaming. Taiwan, Japan and Hong Kong were at stage two as they not only enjoyed and invested in the easily accessable parts of Korean culture but also provided a space for live music events and advertising and also supplied a large tourist trade for their neighbours. But, at stage three China and Vietnam had fallen in love. Idolising products Made in Korea and coining the commonly excepted term ‘Hallyu’ (a Chinese character from a Korean compilation album which loosely translates as Korea Wave) both China and Vietnam were well on the way to becoming unified by their allegiance to Korea’s growing prestige as Asia’s biggest exporter of Pop culture. Following in the footsteps of ‘Japonism’ which saw the exportation of Japanese style and products to Europe in the nineteenth Century the S.E.R.I. predicted a fourth stage of the Korean Wave in which mimickry would cease and countries would begin to actually ‘feel Korea’.
Now in 2008, it is impossible to den the influence that Korean developments are having on Vietnam with new projects and products popping up nationwide the Vietnamese are gradually shaking off their want not, waste not roots and embracing the fully technicolour middle class lifestyle as seen on Korean T.V..In Reading the ‘Korean Wave’ as a Sign of Global Shift (2005) Cho Hae-Joang cleverly points out that “the more a society becomes accustomed to pursuing the new rather than guarding the old, the easier it is to ‘massify’ it.” This hometruth is clearly reflected by Vietnam’s youth population and was pointed out by Fashion student, Nguyen Dau Huey, when he stated “Korean Fashion is crazy fashion. They have created a new fashion in the world. It is not made to the usual structure. It is an interesting reflection of modern life.” Korea dominate the fashion and media markets of Saigon despite numerous complaints from young people that Korean clothes are too heavy for the heat in the city and as well as this they could easily be construed as the Capitalist epicentre of East Asia and so it isn’t a wonder that they have created a mass empire in the sheek and unique urban estate Phu My Hung right here in Vietnam’s biggest city.
