From K-pop to skin care, art exhibit explores global influence of South Korean culture

Transcript

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Geoff Bennett: From K-pop to skin care, South Korea has been at the cutting edge of cultural development internationally. As a new museum exhibit reveals, it didn't happen overnight.

Special correspondent Jared Bowen of GBH Boston reports for our arts and culture series, Canvas.

Jared Bowen: Less than 50 years ago, this was a defining image of South Korea, a field of farm-friendly dirt, today, series, it's this, cosmopolitan with a cacophony of color. It's also this.

(Music)

Christina Yu Yu, Museum of Fine Arts Boston: I think it is very hard for us to imagine people have not heard or encountered anything about a Korea wave in our daily life, whether we know it or not.

Jared Bowen: Christina Yu Yu is chair of the art of Asia at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, where the exhibition Hallyu! The Korean Wave has left its galleries awash in South Korean pop culture in fashion, film and fandom. The wave, she says, began in the 1980s and is cresting still.

Christina Yu Yu: And at the beginning of the exhibition, we have this collage of parodies and retakes of PSY's "Gangnam Style."

There are people from Ghana. There are people from London. There's prisoners in Philippines dancing "Gangnam Style" together. It is almost touching every corner of the world.

Jared Bowen: And the world has responded, making shows like "Squid Game" the most popular non-English television series of all time.

Here, we find costumes from the show and a recreation of the bathroom from "Parasite," the 2019 South Korean film about class struggle with such universal appeal it became a surprise Oscar-winning hit.

Christina Yu Yu: This poor family, there was a flood and their bathroom was destroyed. That's like a symbol of their lives. You know, their aspiration to become an upper-class family was crushed.

Jared Bowen: It's a plotline that mirrors South Korea's own. Economic disparity has been an impetus for the nation's growth, especially in culture.

Case in point, in the mid-1990s, the country realized that the American film "Jurassic Park" generated as much revenue in South Korea as its own Hyundai cars did.

Christina Yu Yu: That was just a shock to everyone. The government noticed that, and they were able to quickly get together and went behind the film industry, went behind the creative industries and started to subsidize them again.

Min Jin Lee, Author: So, what you're really seeing is also capitalism affecting Korean government. It's saying, you know what? We're going to create intellectual property in our music, in our fashion, our designer technology, and we're going to share it.

Jared Bowen: Min Jin Lee is part of the Korean wave. The bestselling author of the novels "Free Food For Millionaires" and "Pachinko," she came to the U.S. with her parents as a child and remains fascinated by Korea's outsized cultural influence.

Min Jin Lee: What really makes me drawn to the Korean story is, you have a country that's in a weird geographical position, because it's surrounded by all these superpowers, Russia, China. And the U.S. really care about what happens to Korea as an important ally.

And you have all these people who are so desperately trying to determine themselves. So, for me, that process of self-actualization, that is what I think makes it keep going and going and going.

Jared Bowen: As the show reveals, it has been a steep climb. Technology giant Samsung started as a grocery store. LG launched as a cosmetics company making Lucky Cream face powder before becoming synonymous with appliances.

Min Jin Lee: You can't make a person keep going unless they want to. And I think, when I meet Koreans around the world, they want to start telling you who they are and what they want. And I kind of think that's really -- I connect with that passion and I connect with that yearning.

Jared Bowen: Then there is K-pop, eliciting worldwide fandemonium. The popularity of Korean music groups, Christina Yu Yu says, stems from a very intentional pop pipeline to their audiences.

Christina Yu Yu: We have displays, costumes worn by different idol groups, performers, such as this one, is worn by an ensemble called Aespa.

Their style of dresses here, design actually is an interaction between the idols themselves and the fashion designers and the fandom. So, basically, there's a callout on the Internet and they say, please submit your ideas.

Jared Bowen: For as splashy as the Korean culture wave has been, the country has always kept its history and culture deeply embedded.

It's abundantly evident in Korean fashion. Yu Yu points out that as avant-garde as looks may appear, they tell the nation's story. They evoke traditional ink paintings. They pay homage to Korea's traditional hanbok dress, and they make subtle references to the moon jar, a simple round object dating to the 18th century used to store food and liquor.

But today, says Yu Yu, it holds weighty symbolism.

Christina Yu Yu: In the 20th century, trying to find something to symbolize the humble origin of Korea, but at the same time the resilience of Korean people. So they really elevated the status of the moon jar as a symbol of Korea.

Jared Bowen: A nation that, for decades now, has found fertile ground wherever it can plant its own will.

For the "PBS News Hour," I'm Jared Bowen in Boston.