Exporting Culture, Building a Nation: South Korea’s Use of Pop Culture as a Soft Power Tool

This thesis examines the multiple governmental plans, policies, and actions by the South Korean government to support and globalize their pop culture products. After the crumbling of its economy and global image due to many external factors in the 1900s, South Korea found itself in poverty with very little global influence. To rebuild their nation, the government implemented many actions to help grow and strengthen their pop culture products to make them more desirable, domestically and internationally. This thesis analyzes three of the major pop culture exports for South Korea, television, movies, and music, and demonstrates how the government has supported and exported these products to international markets as a means of soft power. Then, I examine the negative effects that the soft power agenda has brought onto Korean society and argue that the South Korean government can lessen their investments and support for the development and exportation of their pop culture products due to their immense popularity and emergence of other major issues.