Korean Wave
increase in global popularity of South Korean culture since the 1990s
The Korean Wave, or hallyu (Korean: 한류; IPA: [ˈha(ː)ʎʎu] ), refers to the rise in global interest in South Korean popular culture that has spread rapidly since the 1990s. It is led by the spread of K-pop, K-dramas, K-beauty, K-food, and films, with key successes including K-pop groups 2NE1, BTS and Blackpink, the Oscar-winning film Parasite (2019) and the Netflix television series Squid Game (2021–2025). The Korean Wave has been recognized as a form of soft power and a significant economic asset for South Korea, generating revenue through cultural exports and tourism.
Following the 1997 Asian financial crisis and the end of military censorship over the South Korean entertainment industry, the country emerged as a major exporter of popular culture. The growth of satellite media in the late 1990s helped spread K-dramas and Korean cinema across East Asia and parts of Southeast Asia. Chinese journalists coined the term "Korean Wave" (Chinese: 韩流; pinyin: hánliú) in 1999 to describe the growing popularity of South Korean cultural products. During the 2000s, hallyu expanded into Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe. By 2008, South Korea's cultural exports surpassed its cultural imports for the first time. The rise of social media and global internet platforms helped the Korean entertainment industry reach overseas audiences and gain support from the South Korean government.
Etymology
The term "hallyu" (한류; 韓流) is a neologism composed of two root words: han (한; 韓), meaning "Korean", and ryu (류; 流), meaning "flow", "wave", or "trend".
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Korean Wave” is increase in global popularity of South Korean culture since the 1990s. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Korean, Wave and increase, not as a finished interpretation.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q494316. The Library of Congress control number is sh2014000217. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2019, 2021, 2025 and 1997.
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This entry incorporates text from “Korean Wave” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.