Modern Korea: The Wave That Left Home

How Hallyu, the Korean wave, grew from 1990s roots into K-dramas, K-pop, and Oscar and Emmy wins that changed how the world sees Korea.

For a long time Korean culture was mostly something Koreans shared with each other. Then, in the 1990s, it began to travel.

The word for this is Hallyu (한류), "the Korean wave." It is made of han (한), meaning Korean, and ryu (류), meaning flow or wave. Two things helped it start: the end of military censorship over the entertainment industry, and the recovery from the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Chinese journalists began using the term in 1999.

Milestones.

• 2003 to 2004: the romance drama Winter Sonata became a huge hit, especially in Japan, and boosted tourism to Korea.
• 2012: Psy's "Gangnam Style" became the first YouTube video to reach one billion views.
• 2010s to 2020s: BTS and Blackpink found audiences around the world.
• 2020: the film Parasite won Best Picture at the Academy Awards, the first non-English-language film to do so.
• 2021: Netflix released Squid Game, and the Oxford English Dictionary added both "hallyu" and "Korean wave."

This is why so many people begin learning Korean today: they hear a song or watch a drama and want to understand it without subtitles.

Words from this station

Korean	Romanization	Meaning
한류	hallyu	the Korean wave
서울	Seoul	Seoul
드라마	deurama	drama
영화	yeonghwa	movie
노래	norae	song
팬	paen	fan

Sources: Korean wave.