KOREAN WAVE: POP CULTURE POPPIN LIKE POPCORN

“[I]-ban na itong mga telenovela ng mga [Koreans]…” (Senator Jinggoy Estrada)

Two vendors sell “suha” (pomelos). One sells premium pomelos; the other, a mix of premium and inferior ones. Although both of them sell at the same price, the latter attracts more customers than the former. Why? Getting closer to the scene, we hear this sales pitch:

Vendor: “Ma’am, that pomelo in your hand is inferior which you can get at a lower price. But you deserve this premium one.”

Through her eyes, all pomelos look the same. That’s why his uprightness wins over her instantly.

SOFT POWER

We may call such a vendor’s virtue his selling power over his competitor. For Korean telenovelas, such appealing quality is called “soft power.” According to Wikipedia, “soft power” involves “shaping the preferences of others through appeal and attraction” drawing on its currency: culture, political values, and foreign policies.

Joseph Nye of Harvard University explained that soft power’s best publicity is “credibility” – the scarcest resource during the internet age of fake news and disinformation. “When one country gets other countries to want what it wants,” Nye wrote, it might be dubbed as “soft power” – a concept he further developed in his 2004 book, “Soft Power: The Means To Success In World Politics.”

“Soft power” […] is how the United States got the world to buy its Marlboro Reds and Levi’s Jeans: by peddling a desirable image. By peddling cool,” wrote Euny Hong in her book The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation Is Conquering The World Through Pop Culture. “It wasn’t the United States tanks […] that made the kids in communist Yugoslavia want to pay two months’ wages for black market Levi’s 501 jeans. It was James Dean.”

“[D]apat ang mga artista nating Pilipino talagang may angking galing sa pag-arte ay ‘yun naman dapat ang ipalabas natin sa sariling bansa.” (Senator Jinggoy Estrada)

It begs the question: which is better, Pinoy or Korean movie?

HENERAL LUNA VS. PARASITE

Let’s take, as a specimen, Parasite – a 2019 South Korean movie that won four Oscar awards. Becoming the first non-English-language film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture, it grossed over $263 million worldwide on a $15.5 million budget. What's it all about? It is a satirically comedic thriller about poverty, the contrast between the rich and the poor – about inequality.

I feel for Senator Estrada’s sentiment: “Pilipino talagang may angking galing sa pag-arte.” Imagine we put in a wealth of Pinoy talents, skills, and deep pockets that polished off Heneral Luna, hook on the latest movie-making technology, and then bring them all together into play around the story of 17-year-old Pinoy student Kian Loyd delos Santos – just before he was fatally shot by the police had begged: “Please… I have a test tomorrow.”

Playing on the movie-watching crowd’s heartstrings, that school test could have meant a lot to Kian – a step closer to his dream of having a bed for each of his 4 siblings, of his mother‘s giving up her overseas work as a domestic helper, of not having to use cooking oil when massaging his father, and of his dream of being a policeman – the height of irony. Such a storyline by itself, ceteris paribus, could easily measure up to Parasite’s world-class standard.

Sad to say, the begging question -- “which is better, Pinoy or Korean movie” -- catches only a glimpse of the tip -- the Korean telenovelas -- of the proverbial iceberg. It’s not the only thing. A variety of tips heave into view above the water: Korean music & bands, movies, video games & TV, technology, fashion, and cuisine, to name a few, that the world has fallen in love with -- everything South Korean.

HALLYU

As The Guardian news story bannered, “K-Everything: The Rise and Rise of Korean Culture.” The submerged bulk of such proverbial iceberg under water is called the Korean Wave or the Hallyu -- a collective term that refers to the driver of the phenomenal growth and global popularity of Korean pop culture that propels today South Korea’s cultural economy.

“Instead of banning K-pop and K-drama, let’s copy the economic strategies that led to its rise.” (Rep. Joey Salceda)

It’s easier said than done.

The word “copy” is an understatement. The right term may be “benchmarking,” specifically “practice benchmarking” which involves gathering and comparing qualitative information about how a program is conducted through people, processes, and technology. The “benchmarking” job will be so deep that one needs to dig into the late 1990s when South Korea started to envision in shaping up its popular culture as the main export.

In so doing, South Korea allocated resources to cultural industries like pop culture, tourism, and sports, among other cultural sectors, thereby allowing the entertainment industry to grow and flourish. Lifting the foreign travel ban along with freeing censorship laws, respectively, has fostered the spread of Korean culture abroad as well as promoted diversified movie content.

These Hallyu milestones spoke volumes: Seoul-based rapper Psy’s 2012 song Gangnam Style became the first YouTube with a billion viewers, Billboard has recognized the music group BTS, Netflix has mainstreamed the K-dramas, and America’s Academy awarded Parasite the Oscar Best Picture. As US President Obama in his speech at Hankuk University in 2012 said, “It’s no wonder so many people around the world have caught the Korean Wave, Hallyu.”

BENCHMARKING

Could PH avail itself of the benchmarking process that will give a boost to the plight of our nation? In other words, could PH get hold of and bring into effect the same “soft power” that South Korea put into action through its pop culture that has driven today’s Korean cultural economy?

The deep-rooted answer lies in the perception of the beholder in the world stage looking through the three perceptive lenses: Pinoy culture, PH political values, and PH foreign policies.

Pinoy Culture.

“The countries that surround the Philippines have become the world’s most famous showcases for the impact of culture on economic development. Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hongkong, and Singapore – all are short on natural resources, but all (as their officials never stop telling you) have clawed their way up through hard study and hard work. Unfortunately for its people, the Philippines illustrates the contrary: that culture can make a naturally rich country poor.” (James Fallows, A Damaged Culture)

That 35-year-old critical assessment, whether you like it or not, begs the question today: So far, have we shaped up or shaped out? The world’s striking reaction to our recent presidential election results gave us a clue: “What’s wrong with the Philippines?”

PH Political Values.

“How many investors of conscience around the world see the suffering of former Senator Leila de Lima in the hands of the justice system of her own country and are turned off mightily by the gross miscarriage of justice?” (Marlen Ronquillo, The Manila Times)

Such “gross miscarriage of justice” diminishes PH’s “credibility” -- “soft power’s” publicity around the world. Those “investors of conscience around the world” includes the same Hallyu investors that in 2019 boosted the Korean economy with a US$ 12.3 billion haul.

PH Foreign Policies.

“After conferring with [President Reagan], [Senator] Laxalt called Marcos [Sr.] back. By now it was 5:30 in the morning in Manila. The senator told him that power sharing would be impractical and undignified. He repeated [President Reagan's] invitation to the Marcoses to move to the U.S. His considerable reserves of determination and defiance now practically depleted, Marcos [Sr.] turned to Laxalt for advice.  What should he do? he asked. Laxalt put it to him straight. “I think you should cut and cut cleanly. I think the time has come.” (Sandra Burton, Impossible Dream: The Marcoses, The Aquinos, and the Unfinished Revolution)

The above momentous scene – the final official act of Uncle Sam to the Marcoses -- encapsulated the nuts and bolts of PH Foreign Policy under Marcos [Sr.] regime. He became then Uncle Sam’s “Amboy” in a two-decade long bittersweet relationship that was frozen in a time capsule after he and his family fled to Hawaii.

Fast-forward to here and now: like father, like son? Your guess is as good as mine. A US midterm election will take place in the next few days; a presidential election, on November 2024. Both can be a game changer in geopolitics. Let’s stay tuned.

So far, here’s my two cents' worth. Sad to say, “It’s more fun in the Philippines” has not been as booming as the “Korean Cool.”

OFWS – OUR CORE COMPETENCY

Let’s bolster up instead our tried and tested legit core competency – our OFWs -- reinforce it with homemade “soft power” ammos like education, hard work, and family values, among others. That’s another story.

Head still photo courtesy of istockphotosdotcom