Korea's 'soft power' quest

By John Burton

The recent success of Psy and K-pop groups has boosted talk that Korea has gained the benefits of “soft power” in raising its international stature. But is hallyu, or the Korean wave, the best way to achieve this goal and does Korea want to be identified overseas mainly by its pop culture?

In many respects, hallyu has been beneficial in changing foreign perceptions of South Korea, which previously has been viewed as a grimy industrial powerhouse or whose achievements have been overshadowed by the bizarre doings of North Korea. In addition, South Korea is often ignored as a rising Asian power when most attention paid by foreigners to the region is focused on China or Japan.

This can create a distorted picture. There are a lot more North Korea experts in Washington D.C., for example, than experts on South Korea despite the latter’s economic success. A greater percentage of reporting by the international media is also devoted to North Korea than South Korea. Kim Jong-il or even Kim Jong-un has more name recognition overseas than Lee Myung-bak. There are clear reasons why this is the case. The U.S. government pumps millions of dollars into research on North Korea because it is seen as a national security threat. Newspaper stories about nutty dictators are more entertaining to read.

So it is helpful in one sense that South Korea is now associated with a pudgy comic singer and long-legged beauties doing tightly choreographed dances. Combine that with trendy electronic consumer goods and Korea is beginning to have a cool image. But can the nation exploit this opportunity to make its history, culture and society more attractive to an international audience or promote the study of the Korean language and literature?

Frankly, it’s doubtful this will happen soon. One reason is that many Koreans lack the self-confidence to believe that the outside world is truly interested. Samsung and Hyundai, for example, market themselves overseas as global brands and consciously avoided associating themselves with Korea in the belief that the country was seen until recently as a producer of cheap products.

Moreover, Korea does not have the skills in marketing its culture that come from being a colonial power. Western cultural exports have become so dominant over the last 150 years because of the overseas military and political expansion of the U.K., France and the U.S. In the process, these countries created very sophisticated programs to introduce their cultures. Korea does have such institutions as the Korea Foundation, but it takes decades to match the expertise of the British Council or Alliance Francaise.

But the problems go deeper than this. Because of its national insecurities, Korea has adopted a passive-aggressive attitude when it comes to promoting itself. Unsure whether the world is interested in the country, Korean officials and media compensate by a boosterism that inflates local expectations and strikes outsiders as either chauvinistic or silly.

Koreans convince themselves of the superior merits of their culture by saying, for example, that Hangeul is the world’s most logical alphabet or that Korean cuisine is the world’s healthiest and best. And if anyone questions these assumptions, they are dismissed as a hostile critic.

The result is Korea presents a hopelessly positive image to the outside world that strikes a false note. Moreover, it encourages the belief among Korean officials that they know best about how to promote the country overseas and ignore what foreigners might find interesting.

Foreign residents in Korea often mock the country’s tourism campaigns because of their relentless focus on palaces and Buddhist temples or visits to locations of popular TV dramas. It doesn’t help that the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism has the reputation of being one of the most conservative within the government and is filled with second-rate bureaucrats who could not make it into more prestigious departments. In short, the Korean government is clueless about how to market the country because they view it from a rather parochial perspective.

Although it is quixotic to offer this suggestion to a country that is hypercompetitive in seeking international approval, the best path that Korea could take would be to relax and let its global image evolve naturally over time.

Look at how perceptions of Korea have already improved over the last few decades with little conscious effort. For Americans, Korea was defined 30 years ago by M*A*S*H, Koreagate and authoritarian military rulers. Now it is known for Hyundai cars and Samsung smartphones, while President Obama often cities Korea as example of education excellence and innovation. Ban Ki-moon is U.N. secretary general and Korean-born Jim Yong Kim heads the World Bank.

At the beginning of this year, Psy would have been ignored by Korean officialdom. Now it embraces him as a cultural ambassador. That holds an important lesson. Korea needs to be less driven and more patient in allowing foreigners to discover in their own way what is appealing about Korea just as we who live here do. That is the most effective way to acquire the “soft” power that Korea craves.

John Burton, a former Korea correspondent for the Financial Times, is now a Seoul-based independent journalist and media consultant.

He can be reached at johnburtonft@yahoo.com.