In this hour, It’s hard to refuse that “Korea fever” , “Korea wave” or “Hallyu” (in term of Korean) is really popular in many countries including Thailand. We can find Korean culture around us such as serial dramas, movies, music, food, fashion and some customs. About 10 years ago, Thais became crazy about western pop culture; then, we started being interested in Asian trend such as the Japanese trend about 5-6 year later, and the Korean trend about 3-4 years later. Have you ever wondered about the Korean wave boom in Thailand? , How come? ,And what was the result of it in Thailand? This article will answer your questions.
If we want to know the beginning of cultural industry of Korea, we must look back to economic crisis in 1997. Korea, which is originally an agricultural country, had to improve the economic strategy by pressing and supporting the cultural industry. The government established the “Ministry of Culture and Tourism” to take responsibility in this particularly. By the cooperation between the government and private companies, there were funds which supported cultural business production, especially movies and music, and press them to make profit from other countries. With the Korean government’s policy trying to push the country to become the one of the giants in Asia as Japan and China, they attempted to put and sell their culture into many country to show the Korean culture. The cultural industry of Korea does not only make a great amount of income from this part directly which is about 7% of GDP or 5 billion $, but also give an opportunity in business, attract foreigners to make an investment, and attract foreign travelers to Korea.
In Thailand, the very first thing imported from Korea was online games. About 4-5 years ago the most well-known game which Thais are mostly familiar is “Ragnarok”. Meanwhile, K-pop was also coming with the most favorite serial drama named “Dae Jung Guem” in October, 2005. It was like a first bomb of Korea current in Thailand.. After that series, every entertainment media about Korea become popular in a short time such as music, movies, food and fashion. Many people, especially teenagers, are quite interested in this very much. Music and TV dramas from Korea make people crazy about them. Some try to imitate the style of their favorite stars, or some tries to learn Korean language to understand the songs in order to be capable of talking with their stars (if they have a chance) or some other reasons. Also, Korean restauranst are now quite popular. Korean-style products are also well sold.
K-wave obviously makes consequence in both positive and negative ways. Absolutely, crazy about K-pop, Thai fans are entertained and they have the wider perspective – Thais may get some new ideas or knowledge from consuming it. Also, it lets Thais know what we must improve to be like Korea. However, the current makes some authorities in Thailand concerned about it in two main problems. Firstly, from the survey about behavior of teenagers, it shows that there are some people satisfied with watching Korean TV dramas. Or they play games too much and get not enough rest or not even go to the school/university. Those destroy their health, and it makes the youths that will be the future of the nation become less efficient. The other important problem is about cultural problem which results from consuming the media in wrong ways.
“Fascination in pop stars of K-pop is harmful to Thai culture so much. We found that Thai teenagers in this day just know about three things ; that is Wai , speaking in Thai and using Thai money. We are concerned that base of our cultured will be destroyed. Especially imitating behavior problem, it makes problems about sex and other social problems.” Dr.Sompong said.
These remind authorities in Thailand that our culture might disappear if they neglect in this problem. They must closely keep an eye on the youth’s consuming of different cultural. In addition, we should be concerned that from the past we have taken many different cultures, though many countries around us (Laos, Burma, Cambodia or Vietnam) do not take other nation’s trends and are not crazy about them as much as Thais. Many people said that the reason why Thais take the different cultures easily is that most of Thai people have freedom of thinking – freedom to choose something or not for something. We just want to take what we think is good. Therefore, we can observe that there are many different cultures in our Thai society which makes the interesting question : “How about our culture in the future?”.
Now we know what the result of this wave in Thailand. We can learn many things from this wave : what is the advantages that we can take it to improve our country. This current could make us look back ourselves that it is suitable to have more interest in different cultures until we forget our Thai culture. Finally, we, as Thais, shouldn’t forget to control the Korean current( and other currents also) for avoiding problems from taking this latest different culture.
Reference
http://www.gotomanager.com/news/details.aspx?id=45405
http://news.sanook.com/entertain/entertain_119680.php
http://www.stou.ac.th/Schools/sca/masterboard1/question.asp?GID=25
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean-Wave#References
- article: “Korea fever : culture in media”
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