<aside> 🇰🇷 Global popularity of South Korea’s cultural economy exporting pop culture, entertainment, music, TV dramas and movies

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North and South Korea had been one nation for over a thousand years

• They could have developed similarly after splitting in 1945, at the end of WWII
  • North Korea possessed the resources to outpace the south in development
  • Political and economic decisions their leaders made destined the countries for completely different futures

From 1910 until 1945, Japan ruled Korea in a brutal occupation

• Colonial rule ended when Japan surrendered to the Allied forces at the end of WWII and was forced to give up its colonies
• Soviet Union and the United States— victors over Japan— moved in, jointly occupying the Korean Peninsula under two spheres of influence
• Soviets occupied the North, Americans oversaw the south, line known as thirty-eighth parallel divided the peninsula

During the 1980s, South Korea established itself as a major producer of automobiles, ships, TV sets, and computer chips

• A handful of giant single-family conglomerates— groups that run multiple companies across different industries; drove out much of this growth
• Conglomerates known as chaebol, were private businesses, but they built close relationships with the government

  • Government incentivized chaebol to increase their production by providing them with low-interest loans based on their performance; measured meticulously with clear benchmarks

  • Strategy worked, chaebol cooperated with the government to produce and export goods at increasingly efficient rates

    

1997 Financial Crisis hits Asia

Businesses were vastly indebted, banks were over-leveraged and its financial system was on the verge of collapse

• Obtained a $58 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF)
  • Koreans gave up their own assets to the Korean government in order to escape the IMF crisis

Riding the Korean Wave

Cost to Hallyu

• Largest gender pay gap
• Lowest fertility rate in the world
• Plastic surgery