Pursuits
Supercool South Korea!
The country has turned pop culture into its most important export
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In an ad that aired in Thailand last year, a boy trying to impress a girl takes a sip of Lipton iced tea. He suddenly starts speaking Korean. The girl, naturally, falls for him. “What’s not cool about Korea?” asks Jeff Yang, a Chinese American who writes about Asian culture. “It’s a land of sleek consumer electronics, long-legged and beautiful women, men who combine soulfulness and emotion with manly good looks.”
The anecdote and observation come from Euny Hong’s The Birth of Korean Cool, an insightful book about the country’s plan to use its pop culture as a means to achieve international superpowerdom. In Asia and many other places—no, not yet America—South Korea is increasingly hip.