ABSTRACT
Recently, the popularity of South Korean cultural goods-movies, TV programmes, pop
music and computer games-has rapidly increased. This phenomenon is referred to as the
Hallyu (translated into English as the Korean Wave) phenomenon (Cho, 2012; Jang &
Paik, 2012). For instance, Korean rapper PSY’s “Gangnam Style” became the first music
video clip in the history of YouTube to reach one billion views, on 22 December 2012.
“Gangnam Style” was not only the first single video to record one billion views since the
launch of YouTube in 2005, but it also achieved this record in just 161 days (Koehler,
2013). U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon met PSY at the United Nations Headquarters
and he made a comment that PSY has an “unlimited global reach”. (Jin, 2012, p. 5) Further-
more, Korean director KimKi-duk’s film “Pieta”won the Golden Lion, the award for the best
film, at the 69th Venice Film Festival on 10 September 2012. Kim’s Golden Lionmarked the
