LAUSR

In the 1970s, a large number of Hong Kong movies were exported in various regions of East Asia. Japanese television dramas and popular music became popular in the 1980s and in the early 1990s. Hallyu, or the (South) Korean wave, started to make its presence felt in East Asia and other parts of the world at the turn of the century.Various aspects of the “counter-globalizational” or “glocalized” flow of Korean popular culture have been analyzed by scholars of various fields. The term Hallyu (Korean: 한류, Chinese: 韓流) first appeared in China when the South Korean TV dramaWhat is Love?사랑이뭐길래 broke the broadcasting record in China for foreign TV drama in 1997. Later, the flow continued on to other destinations in Asia, including Taiwan, Vietnam, and Japan. Sung Sang-Yeon examined Hallyu in Taiwan and noted that the wave was started in 1999 by the duo dance group Clon. The trend was followed by the import of Korean TV dramas at the turn of the century, as Korean dramas offered a fresh yet low-cost and high-quality entertainment for the Taiwanese audience: “From 1994 to 2004, Taiwan became one of the biggest consumers of Korean dramas, importing even more Korean products than mainland China.” In Vietnam, the trend was initiated by the Korean TV drama Star inMyHeart (별은 내 가슴에), which facilitated the massive import of Korean TV dramas to the country; in 2004, Korean TV dramas occupied 40% of network’s broadcasting time.