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| A robot greets visitors at the Korea stand at the International Tourism Trade Fair in Berlin, which features a giant interactive "Green Light Red Light" video game reminiscent of the popular "Squid Games" TV series, March 8. AFP-Yonhap |
By Kwak Yeon-soo
Europe has emerged as the fastest-growing market for "hallyu" ― or the rising global demand for Korean pop culture ― according to an annual report published by the Korea Foundation (KF).
The foundation estimated that there were about 13.2 million hallyu fans in Europe in 2022, a 37 percent jump from 2021. The main markets for Korean pop culture abroad were still in Asia and Oceania, accounting for 73.4 percent of all hallyu fans, the public organization said in its annual report "Global Hallyu 2022" published in cooperation with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
By countries, there were more than 84.3 registered hallyu fans in China followed by 16.8 million in Thailand and 13.3 million in Vietnam. A total of 118 countries were surveyed by 149 overseas missions.
"Hallyu has gained a strong foothold across Asia, so we need to develop a strategy to reach a much wider audience outside of Asia. We could utilize Europe as a bridgehead for expanding Korean wave to the West in the future," KF said.
The number of hallyu fans around the world reached 178 million in 2022. This is about a 19-fold increase from 9.26 million in 2012 when KF's survey was first conducted.
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The leading factors behind hallyu's growth were the popularity of Korean video content on global platforms and an increase in the number of hallyu fan communities. The number of fan clubs stood at 1,684, up from 1,464 in 2021. They have resumed offline activities that were suspended during the COVID-19 pandemic, the KF analyzed.
The reasons behind the growing interest in Korean culture include K-pop's catchy melodies, creative choreography, Korea's economic and cultural development model, etiquette and heartwarming depiction of bonds between families that strike a chord with viewers around the globe.
The "2023 Hallyu Survey" released by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism showed that foreigners associate K-pop with Korea more than anything else. Fourteen percent of 25,000 hallyu content users from 26 different countries associated K-pop with Korea, followed by Korean food (13.2 percent), hallyu stars (7.4 percent), K-drama (6.6 percent) and IT products (5.6 percent).
Webtoons were the most popular hallyu content, with 28.6 percent of respondents saying they consumed Korean webtoons. Korean beauty products and drama came next at 28.6 percent and 28.6 percent, respectively.
In terms of time spent, webtoons posted a monthly consumption of 16.1 hours, higher than the average of 15.2 hours for all cultural content. The figure has been rising steadily for the past three years.
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