South Korea’s Moment Owes More to Samsung Than Squid Game
South Korea is having a moment. Between the hit Netflix show Squid Game, the chart-topping boy band BTS, and the Academy Award-winning movie Parasite, the country’s culture suddenly seems to be everywhere.
With each allusion to Hallyu—the so-called Korean wave of cultural exports—an invocation of Seoul’s soft power is often not far behind. Unlike hard power, which forces others to follow your wishes, soft power helps you win their support by demonstrating the appeal of your culture and values. That Squid Game and Parasite are an expression of Korean soft power seems to have become an accepted fact. The reality may be more complex.
In the seminal 1990 work in which he coined the term “soft power,” Harvard political scientist Joseph Nye wrote that if a nation’s “culture and ideology are attractive, others will more willingly follow.” The catchy songs of BTS have teens worldwide singing along, but neither Squid Gamenor Parasite portrays a society that others might be eager to emulate. Both are bleak depictions of wealth disparity in modern South Korea.
In Squid Game, the down-on-their-luck characters compete to the death to win 45.6 billion won ($39 million). After the losers get killed—in a series of increasingly grotesque contests based on children’s games—their organs are harvested for sale on the black market. With more than 111 million views in its first month, the show is Netflix Inc.’s biggest series launch yet.
The impoverished protagonists of Parasite, which won Best Picture at the 2020 Academy Awards, meanwhile, inveigle their way into the lives of a wealthy family across town, brutally clearing out those who stand in their path. South Korea’s previous big hit on the film awards circuit.
South Korea has made other megahits—its dramas and rom-coms are lapped up across Asia. But the effect of its rising cultural influence may be more economic than ideological. U.S. exports helped sell U.S. values. For Korea, the exports themselves may be enough.
It’s not trying to sell its system of government, but it does have Samsung smartphones, Hyundai cars, and Samyang noodles to offer. And in a world of rising trade tensions, convincing China and the U.S. alike to be open to buying your products may be a far more desirable outcome.
Though 2020 has brought many challenges, South Korea’s global reputation is having a day in the sun. The country’s pandemic response has been widely praised, and its pop culture prestige has reached new heights with the film Parasite and the boy band BTS both breaking U.S. records. Clearly, South Korea’s 2020 wins are powerful additions to its soft power toolbox.
Soft power is a country’s ability to influence others’ choices by persuading or co-opting rather than coercing. Instead of using a carrot and stick, soft power relies on positive associations with a nation’s culture, foreign policy, and political virtues to attract others to its cause. After a steady, decades-long rise, South Korea gained new soft power potential in 2020 that, if used correctly, will enhance its influence on the international stage.
Power is one of the more contestable concepts in political theory, but it is conventional and convenient to define it as “the ability to effect the outcomes you want and, if necessary, to change the behavior of oth- ers to make this happen.”
Hard power is achieved through military threat or use, and by means of economic menace or reward.
Soft power is the use of a country's cultural and economicinfluence to persuade other countries to do something, rather than the use of military force (hard power)