Avon Chess Set Value

Koreanization of Philippine and Asian Popular Culture

By Josephine Acosta-Pasricha, Ph. D.

This is an academic paper published in "Karunungan", a journal in philosophy in 2004, and recently revisited, updated and revised for use of professors and students in aesthetics, hermeneutics, cultural studies, postmodern and poststructuralism.QUOTE of the DayFinally shot the last scene of 'Dream High'. It was a comedic crying scene but I didn't need any artificial tear drops because when I thought about the fact that this was the last shoot, tears just started to fall from my eyes.My executive producing partner Yong Jun asked me if I felt happy or sad that 'Dream High' finally ended and I said "I feel thankful, so thankful"..This all started when I wrote the word 'Dream High' on the back of a scrap paper. I thank Yong Jun and the Keyeast family for developing my small idea, CJ Media for supporting it, Hye Ryun for making it into a wonderful script, Gi Won EP for putting it on KBS (Also thank you for forcing me to act in this drama), Director Lee, Kim, and Baek and the entire staff for making this into a real Drama, All the actors for their effort, especially Gi Jun for being my acting teacher on the set, Eun Jung for being the pillar of the story, IU for giving her best in between her crazy schedule as a singer, Su Hyun for surviving a year of vocal/ dance training, and my precious, stout artists Taec, Jason, Suzy and Joo for believing in me, Nam Yong, Faryoung, Ji Sang, Eun Ji, Bong Won and the entire JYP nation for their endless effort. And most of all, I thank all the viewers who watched this 'far-from-perfect' drama.This was my first time creating a TV drama and I learned so much from it so I'll make sure to keep note of everything and comeback with a better show next time. Till then everybody chase your dreams and Dream High! Now everyone get ready for Dream High 16th the final episode.- Teacher Yang from Kirin High school (Park Jin Young)

KimJoon, Kim Yhun Joong, Lee Min Ho, Kim Bum

Boys Over Flowers

Bae Yong Joon and Kim Yhun Joongfor theHohoemi Charity Project

(Images and YouTube videos in accordance with doctrine of Fair Use, sec. 107 Title 17, US Code, Copyright Law -- For criticism, comment, teaching, scholarship and research, for non profit educational purpose.)

Flash Mob Dancingis a very original innovation, like an opera at Macy's. KOREANIZATION OF PHILIPPINE AND ASIAN POPULAR CULTURE BY JOSEPHINE ACOSTA-PASRICHA, PH. D.visiting scholar, Organizational DynamicsSchool of Arts and Sciences Graduate StudiesUniversity of Pennsylvania
Copyright 2010

Statement of the Problem

The problem which I would like to solve is how and why the Koreanization of Philippine Popular Culture, -- or is it the inverse, the globalization by Korean Culture in Cultural Studies? is causing a dent in the identity and meaning of the Filipino as a people and as a country.

It seems that with the Korean soap opera being dubbed in Filipino andappropriated in the Philippines, there is a subliminal Koreanization of popular culture. This is not happening only in the Philippines; but also, in Japan, SoutheastAsia, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Australia, China, Hongkong, Taiwan, North Africa, Middle East, Egypt, Israel, Iran, Turkey, Central Asia, Eastern Europe, Hungary, Scandinavia, Norway, Russia, South America, Chile, Mexico, Argentina, the United Kingdom, Hawaii and the United States.

Whereas globalization is traditionally defined as Western, or more specifically American hegemony on the East or the third world; it seems that the Koreanization of Asian popular culture, in fact, is a way of inverse globalization by Korean popular culture.

My Princess 2011

Kim Tae Hee and Song SeungHeun

Lee Byung Hun is among highest paid actors in Korea

KimTae Hee

Koo Hye Seon

I would like to delve into the implications of this phenomenon. The implications of this Koreanization of Philippine popular culture are three-fold: First, soap opera is the most alive tool of media in the age of postmodernity in creating an audience that can be addicted to and confused with hyperreality, or virtual reality. Second, it is not just the commercialization or commodification of foreign products and culture, but the consumption of a Geist, the German term for Spirit, which stands for reality itself. Sometimes Geist is identified with the terms: Idea, Spirit, Mind or Absolute. The term is predicated to God, whose nature is spirit, according to G. W. Hegel, in his book, Phenomenology of the Spirit, (1977).

Is this Korean Geist authentic to the Filipino people in the Philippines? Does this Korean/Asian Geist help us know our identity and meaning as a people and as a country?

Third, just as Koreanization is shaping Asian culture with its high ratings, about 30% in the Philippines and 50% in Korea itself; Asian culture, in fact even Philippine popular culture, is also shaping Korean culture. In the process of the target country like the Philippines translating and dubbing the Korean soap opera or teleserye from its Korean source language, there is a translation of the source culture; but, there is also an inclusion of cultural elements from the target culture.

Ideally, the result should be a mediation of cultures, a glocalization instead of globalization.

Love Story in Harvard

Context

Let me contextualize this paper by defining first of all the subject called Cultural Studies, which is the most recent end result of Hermeneutics and Deconstruction.

Cultural Studies (although the definition seems redundant) is the study of culture or more particularly, the study of contemporary culture (Simon During, 1993, p.1).

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Simon During continues: Even assuming that we know precisely what contemporary culture is, it can be analyzed in many ways, sociologically for instance, by objectively describing its institutions and functions as if they belong to a large regulated system. (Ibid.) Or economically, by describing the effects of investment and marketing on cultural production. (Ibid.)

More traditionally, Cultural Studies, sometimes known as Critical Theory, is the end result of the philosophical subject Hermeneutics and Deconstruction. It can be studied critically by: 1.contextualizing original texts according to its historical origin and authorial intent 2.or celebrating either large forms or specific texts or images. The question remains: Does cultural studies bring its own orientation to these established forms of discourse analysis? Can cultural studies solve the problem of meaning and identity of a people overwhelmed by cultural hegemony?

Methodology

The form of analysis developed by the discipline of Critical Theory or Cultural Studies has two features, when it first appeared in Great Britain in the 1950s.

First, Cultural Studies concentrated on subjectivity which means that it studied culture in relation to individual lives, breaking away from social scientific positivism or objectivism. Richard Hoggart in the Uses of Literacy (1957) shows how cultural changes affect an individuals whole way of life. For Hoggart, Culture is an important category because it helps us recognize that one life-practice cannot be torn out of a large network constituted by many other life practices like working, sexual orientation, family life. (Ibid.) Second, Cultural Studies is an engaged and engaging form of analysis. The basic premise is that society is structured unequally. Individuals are not all born with the same access to education, money, health care, jobs, social status. And the inequality of status work in favor of the interests of those who have more resources and against those who have fewest resources. (Ibid.) These two defining features of Cultural Studies are closely connected; because, it is at the level of the individual life that the cultural effects of social inequality are most apparent.

Cultural Studies cannot just turn to the social and historical conditions.

Cultural Studies insists that one cannot just ignore or accept division and struggle.

Cultural Studies must stand in the gap and mediate understanding.

More specifically, Cultural Studies appears as a field of study in Great Britain in the 1950s out of Leavisism, a form of studies named after F. R. Leavis. Leavisism is an attempt to redisseminate what is now commonly called, after Pierre Boudieu, as cultural capital. (Simon During, 1993)

Leavis wants to use the educational system to distribute literary knowledge and art appreciation more widely. The Leavisites argue for a very restricted canon, discarding modern experimental works. They celebrate works, the great canons or the great tradition, directed towards developing the moral sensibility of the audience. (Ibid.)

Culture is not merely entertainment or a leisure activity. Reading only great canons is not a concerned and balanced sense of life. The main threat to a mans sense of life comes from the pleasure and illusion or delusions offered by mass culture. (Ibid.)

Therefore, the social democratic power bloc of government and education can and must try to form and reform the citizens sensibilities through mass culture.

The theory of consumption and simulation by Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007) are most applicable in this contemporary age of postmodern technology. Among the most effective postmodern tools are the internet, games, blogging and chatting, the film and television, radio, cellphones, I-Pod, which are all postmodern because they are characterized by polysemy and pluralism.

Polysemy means that meanings are not received uniformly by the mass audience but negotiated by many different groups. Pluralism, on the other hand, means many possible meanings. (Glenn Ward, Postmodernism, 1997)

Television in the present contemporary age is the simulation and simulacra of reality. There comes a point when the audience and performer can no longer distinguish the boundaries between reality and simulation. The result is the creation of a new reality, a virtual reality that seems more real than the real, which Jean Baudrillard calls hyperreality.

This is what is happening in the recent dubbing and appropriation into Filipino of Korean soap opera.

Save the Last Dance

My Girl

Princess Hours

Koreanization as Textual Analysis

There is a tsunami of Korean soap opera lashing at Philippine television, all over Asia and the West.

Choi Ji Woo

First there was "Meteor Garden" from Chinese telenovela; then ABS CBN channel 2 teleserye Lovers in Paris, the last three episodes of which hit the highest ever at 51% in Korea alone."Lovers in Paris has also hit high in Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Australia, Hawaii, America, even in France, Hongkong, and Taiwan. Lovers in Parishas being shown the second time around in the Philippines on Saturdays and Sundays by ABS CBN. It has also been shown with Chinese sub titles on Chinese TV channel in the Philippines. There is also a Filipino appropriation of "Lovers in Paris" starring K C Concepcion, Piolo Pascual, Zanjoe Marudo, Maricar Reyes, Christopher de Leon, Mark Gil, Rachel Anne Wolfe, Assunta de Rossi, script by Shaira Mella, Generiza Reyes, Ricardo Fernando III, and brilliant direction by F M. Reyes. Other Filipinoappropriationsare"My Girl", "Only You". GMA Channel 7 has translated into Filipinothe top rating soap opera, Stairway to Heaven, which is really the number one soap opera ever shown in Korea; "Jewel in the Palace", whichis a top favorite in Asia; "Jumong", another blockbuster. The Filipino audience has watched "Boys Over Flowers", "The Legend", "Winter Sonata", "The Autumn Tale", "Princess Hours", "My Husband's Woman", "Coffee Prince", Save the Last Dance for Me, Full House, " My Name is Kim Sam Soon", "All About Eve", the Diary of Four Sisters on Arirang TV and on local television networks. Besides enjoying "To Marry a Millionaire", "101st Proposal", "Green Rose", "Something Happened in Bali", the Filipino audience can look forward to watching "Shining Inheritance", "Temptation of Wife", "East of Eden", and "Queen Seon Deok", which recently won awards. What are the implications of this deluge in culture?

Lee Da Hae

First Implication: Commercialization and commodification

In the terms of Theodor W. Adorno (1903-69) and Max Horkheimer (1895-1973) in their book, Dialectics of Enlightenment (trans. John Cumming, London, 1989) we would call this the commercialization and commodification of products and art, and therefore, a loss on the part of Philippine culture and artists. Our actors and actresses are marginalized and left out to do mere dubbing. Besides the specific loss of job opportunities, there is a loss of identity and meaning in ones work as an artist, and in Philippine culture.

This is a specific exemplification of what Adorno and Horkheimer indict in the culture industry of enlightenment as mass deception.

Proof can be gleaned from a market research study done in Japan. The Samsung Economic Research Institute (SERI) conducted an opinion poll and discovered that the top ten trends of the year 2004were as follows: 1. Cyworld and internet community of web blogs 2. multifunctional cellphones 3. Vita 500 health drinks 4. popularity of Yonsama, a Korean telenovela as translated into Japanese, and the Korean Wave in Japan 5. high capacity MP3 music players 6. low price cosmetics 7. Korean TV miniseries, specially Lovers in Paris 8. bestseller book Marginal Way of Learning Chinese Ideographs 9. long term mortgage loans specially in real estate 10.spicy food. It takes about six months to two years for trends or fads abroad to reach the Philippines;these ten trendswere already affecting the Filipino psyche in the year of the green wooden chicken of 2005 and into the next decade. Certainly, one could just walk in the streets and observe how our young XYZ and millennial populationare into: 1. cyberworld or an internet community of web blog or blogging, specially about Lovers in Paris" 2. multifunction cellphones with digital cameras, ring tones and images 3. healthy drinks and organic food 4. the Korean wave in fashion with embellishment of fur, leather and feathers. The youth are all wearing Vivian styled layered clothes. The yuppies are beginning to sport taipan or chaebol coded dark business suits, white or blue long sleeve shirts with wide pastel ties, tied the Korean way, and slim rectangular frames for eyeglasses. Such narrow eyeglasses are more respectable and intimidating, in contrast to big oblong frames that are more open to people. Try it for effect! 5. high capacity MP3 music players that could load thousands of songs, I-Pod, I-Phone 6. low price cosmetics like Avon, Ever Belena, Fashion 21 7. Lovers in Paris 8. best seller books like 22 Immutable Laws in Marketing, 7 Laws of Leadership, Jesus Christ in Blue Jeans, Jesus Christ Entrepreneur, Jesus Christ CEO, even the Filipino version of Kama Sutra, and JullieYap Dazas Manners for Moving Up 9. long term mortgage loans 10. affordable home cooked food It is fantastic how "Winter Sonata" and Lovers in Paris have caused and affected a Korean Wave. All that is necessary for a product to sell is for it to be mentioned in the soap opera. When Carlo asked the question: Dont you know the 11th law of marketing?, the sales of the book The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing soared to fourth position. In almost all of 20 episodes in Lovers in Paris, and in all Korean soap opera, Korean products are being exhibited -- brand new Korean made cars, cellphones, MP 3 players, fashion and fur, scarves, inexpensive cosmetics. The Korean Wave is a government initiative, supported by cultural productions in preparation for three international conventions slated in Korea in 2005.

Song Hye Kyo

Second Implication: Hyperreality

Everybody with Sartrean anxiety, or Aristotelian pity and fear, waited for the last three episodes of Lovers in Paris, which are the most tear jerking episodes, where Carlo goes out to buy ice cream for Vivian, and comes back only to find a tape recorded message of a break off and a goodbye from Vivian. Vivian cries recording this message. Carlo crieslistening tothis message.Carlo criestelling his sister, who is actually revealed later on as his own mother, that he could take any problem in business; but, he does not know to handle a romanticbreak-up. He never knew how most difficult a heartbreak could be, according to Carlo, the poker faced top honcho of a Korean car company! Do we not teach how to break off in a relationship, the how-to of exit strategy, in graduate school to MBA's and Ph. D.s? Martin meets a car accident, goes into coma for many days and does not recognize Carlo and Vivian in the hospital. He seems to have selective amnesia, because he recognizes only his mother. How selective amnesia, a trend in Korean telenovela is possible, is really beyond psychological explanation. Normally, either a patient has total amnesia or selective amnesia of painful memories, but not selective amnesia of happy memories. According to Chris Barker in his book Cultural Studies, soap opera makes an effort to reflect reality and creates virtual reality. It introduces the reality of a perfect way of living, loving, friendship, playing, eating healthy food, fashion, cosmetics, etc. It also exorcises real events through reproducing the meaning over and over again, until such time that television is no longer reflecting the real. (Chris Barker, Cultural Studies, p. 266) Chris Barker enumerates four general features of soap opera that embody simulation of the real: (Ibid.)

Open ended narrative form. Soap operas suspend endings based on the clamor and ratings of the audience. There are twists in the story line that totally dislocates original ideas of the shows. There is no definite ending and so there is no sense of closure. Closure resides upon ambivalence. (Ibid.)

Core Locations. Soap opera has a definite location associated with the flow of the story or character. Television is always where it happens, news reporters are embedded in the Gulf War, Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti; so television intrudes into ones reality, andthe war and suffering is taken into the living room. It becomes "telefission" or the combination of the real and the unreal. (Ibid.)

Here in Lovers in Paris, Paris is shown as the most romantic place associated with lovers. Tensions between conventions of realism and melodrama. Soap opera utilizes the convention of realism and melodrama and denies the artificiality of the created series. Melodrama is defined as the heightened sense of the dramatic, focusing on emotions and torments of character and plot. Melodramatic emotions are exaggerated reactions of people, who make emotional contact and connect with audience. (Ibid.) Pivotal themes of interpersonal relationships. Special events in real lives are emphasized including marriages, divorces, romantic break-up, arguments, alliances, acts of revenge, acts of love and caring, expression of feelings, display of affections, etc. All these provide narrative dynamics and emotional interest. (Ibid.) This elucidates the imaginary kind of life, the perfect, becoming more mythic than realistic. Soap opera uses culture as its referential mode of communicating to the masses. Because culture is built by the masses and seen through media, a circular reciprocity takes place. Soap opera feeds the people, who feed on the media. Media cultivates the primitive culture into a highly sophisticated one to be able to change the cultures. But a socio-cultural change that is grounded on media, is questionable, because the masses play dummy of the system. It is clear that the substance or content here, culture, information and commodities are nothing but the phantoms that support the operation of media itself, whose function is merely to induce mass and to produce a homogenous human and mental flux. (Ibid.)

Open Ended Endings in Lovers in Paris

Lovers in Paris

KC Concepcion and Piolo Pascual

Lovers in Paris '09

Will Vivian and Carlo still marry each other and live happily ever after in the tradition of stock role models, like Cinderella and her Prince Charming. First, the audience comes to know that the amnesia of Martin is a pretense. He pretends to have an amnesia to give way for the romance of Carlo and Vivian. Eventually he meets another girl by the beach in Korea, in the same way he first met Vivian, who was falling off a bicycle in Paris. Second, Vivian thinks they can never be happy as long as they cause pain to the members of their family and many other people who love them. So Vivian leaves for Paris and studies film making for two years. This respect for the wishes of the elders, the wishes of employers and emperors, is characteristic of Confucius ethics, valid and understood in Korea, Japan and China. Third, Carlo cannot just let go, run after Vivian to Paris, leave the company and workers who depend on them. The top car company that Carlo heads finally recovers, in two years time, with the introduction of a new car model. Again, Carlos Confucian work ethics is displayed here. But the love story, with the ending episode, is triple open ended. The audience, depending on his/her predilection towards traditional endings or deconstruction or postmodernity may make his/her own implications. And if the audience is a practitioner of Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) and his novel theory of deconstruction with his distinction between difference and differance, he/she may understand and interpret the soap opera better. Difference means that one thing is not the same as another. Differance, spelled with an a, means that meaning is deferred into the future.

Polysemy and plurality of ending that may be opposite each other and deferred into the future is as dramatic a resolution as it is a very sophisticated, most psychologically satisfying and post modern technique. After all soap operas never end, they just go on and on in the fantasy world of television and reality, in hyperreality.

The audience can allow three endings in the interpretation of Vivian back in Paris, studying filmmaking and working again as a waitress in a restaurant. Carlo goes back to Paris to look for Vivian, works as a mechanic in a car shop, and learns how to live with his own shadow. Carlo and Vivian eventually meetby the fountain, where Carlo now throws a coin to wish for a dinner partner.

While eating dinner together by the Seine River, Vivian asks a Zen question: what if they had never met, what if he had never bumped into the cigarettes being vended in the street, what now? To which Zen Master Carlo answers: we will always meet again, because we have already met in the past. Does this mean that lovers in a past reincarnation are the same lovers, although different persons, in the next reincarnation and eventually forever?

There are implications of soulmates here, always paired off with each other, through the time/space continuum, one and the same and throughout eternity. Reincarnation is valid in love and romance, not just a matter of dharma and karma, or duty and the fruit of ones action.

Now, are these implications of reincarnation truth claims, according to Philippine culture, according to Indian philosophy or Chinese philosophy? In the Philippine appropriation of "Lovers in Paris", the ending is linear and ironic. There is a happy ending; but, there is no happy ending, because all romance begins all over again in a cyclical process.

So what are the alternative endings in the Korean original narrative?

First, this romance in Paris is just a dream, and sometimes, we do not know where reality ends and dream begins and vice versa. Indeed soap opera is the most pointed example of hyperreality.

Second, this romance in Paris is just a wish fulfillment of a foreign overseas worker as written in a diary, or an article as written by the feature writer, Vivian. Remember, she has started working as a writer for a PR publication. Or it is just script for a movie as written by Vivian? After all she is daughter of a movie director, a real fan of movies and a student of film making in Paris. She appropriates all her favorite movies into her script, like Roman Holiday, Sabrina, Breakfast at Tiffanys, Pretty Woman, Maid in Manhattan, Moon River, Gone With the Wind, and she even lives her life according to her appropriations. All movie fans would understand this.

Third, Carlo meets Vivian again in Paris and the telenovela ends in full circle where it began in Paris. There is a second pair of lovers who meet in Korea and repeat the same story. Perhaps this was the past, or this is the future. After all, Carlo and Vivian are just like you and I, Everyman and Everywoman, Superman (Overman) and Superwoman, in search for health and wealth and happiness in love.

I rather like these postmodern and post structuralist alternatives, self conscious metafiction, that suggest of directors and scriptwriters with exposure and training in France, Spain, the Netherlands, China, India, Japan, Russia, Europe, Canada and the United States. They have gone beyond the formulaicHallyu icons and Hollywood cliches, like a man carrying a woman onpiggy back, a woman sleeping on the shoulder of a man, the prince charming fitting the shoe of the poor girl, the ballroom sequence, brushing one's teeth, the bycycle ride, the car/bus/train chase, the airport scene.They have movedforward to more innovative, creative and original templates with excellent production values, advanced technology and special effects. But the winner in the telenovela is actually business, tradeand advertising, and those who can see the business trends spawned by the teleserye. Cinema and TV drama have spawned the DVD business and content management; Knowledge management is alive and kicking like a hockey stick. We should just wait for a specialty issue of a newspaper lifestyle section or an entertainment magazine or even a book that will ask different fashion designers to design an appropriate wedding gown for a bride, and a suit for a bridegroom, a hotel to plan the wedding menu, flowers, cakes, candles, songs and articles on how to make your parents-in-laws like you, how to break off with your boy friend with civility, good manners for moving up in the world, all in the Philippine and Asian context.

Conclusion

Il Mare, Lee Jung-jae and Jeon Ji Hyun

The Lake House with Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves

Sandra Bullock plays chess with dog

In India, we call this trend glocalization, where both local culture and globalization interact with each other intertexually, pre-textually, sub-textually, post-textually, rather than just the superior rich Western culture globalizing the supposedly inferior poor Third World culture. One of the most successful appropriations isHollywood's "The Lakehouse", starring Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves, from the Korean Hallyu original, "Il Mare", starrying Lee Jung-jae and Jeon Ji-Hyun. "The Lakehouse" is a headline grabber, but "Il Mare" is a heart stopper. YouTube Video What are the effects of the Koreanization of Philippine and Asian popular culture on the cultural health of the Filipinos and all the peoples of Asia?

It poses a threat to the folk heritage of the Filipino people and those of other Asian countries.
It poses a threat to high art or true original art or authentic art. There is a blurring of boundaries between high art and low art. And although I am not for elitist and patronizing art, I will always argue for authentic art.
It poses a threat to the uses and pleasures of popular art. Jean Baudrillard discusses the theory of simulation, with the three components of production, manipulations and social hierarchy, as how media feeds startle reality. The images of television are not credible enough, but people usually base their own lives in the context of television. It is the simulacra of the real, the copy of the real that thoroughly replaces the real. This is neither the theory of the Cave of Plato, nor the mimetic theory of representation of Aristotle.
Jean Baudrillard discusses the theory of consumption as denoting the virtual process of consuming objects, as the manifestation of the idea of objects. Men are objects of simulation and consumption, and they are no longer treated and respected as subjects.
Soap Opera is the object of consumption, that transforms into a simulacrum, The image of simulation replaces the reality of the real referent, according to Jean Baudrillard.

Son Ye Jin in "The Classic"

A Moment to Remember

Rondo, a Korean and Japanese convergence

Television and cinemais a postmodern object of inquiry and controversy in the academe. Echoing the findings of postmodernism and post structuralism, Cultural Studies emphasize polysemy and pluralism. This means that meanings are not received uniformly by a mass audience. Different people from different countries interpret the same thing in different ways.

Lee Yeong-ae and Lee Byung-hunin "Joint Security Area"

Jewel in the Palace

Lee Yeong-ae and Bae Yong Joon in "Papa"

Meanings and identity two main post modern problems are negotiated by many groups, andby different cultures. Thus, we recommend a consciousness of people and institutions for cultural egalitarianism where we allow both the foreign source culture and local target culture to shape and be shaped by each other. What the Philippines and Asia should learn from the Koreans is not the Korean thematics simulated in the soap opera, but how the Korean Wave has helped the Koreans attain a better economy, global tradeand quality of life. The Korean Wave started as a fractal in 1988 when the Olympics was held in Korea and subseconded by the World Cup two years later. The young Koreans could not attend all the events in the Olympics and the World Cup.But they wanted to cheer their national teams. So, without any grand plan or signal, the Korean youth just went out into the streets, and cheered for the Olympics and the World Cup, and then their country's national teams, specially the soccer team. When they won, everybody would cheer in the streets. And when the national team lost, they would also go into the streets and cry.They cared for their country. They showed the world that the Nations business is their family business.

This two national experiences made the youth realize their strength as a group. Thus, they applied this new found energy in business, culture, theatre, music, dance, popular culture, film, television, sports, cooking.

Since 1988, Korea perfected their products and craft, and has gone around the world presenting their culture and their products from cooking to rock music, to television drama and cinema. The fractal loop has expanded exponentially, and Korea has become one of the top ten cultural exporters.

Jeon Do Yeongat Asian Film Festival

Jeon Do Yeong wins at Cannes

The Korean Government saw the birth of a New Korean Wave and they supported it and even made it into a policy. So, it is not accidental that Korean soap opera is all over Asia, South America, the Middle East, Africa, the West.The Koreans have incubated the plan for almost twenty years. There is now a trend to transform the Korean Wave or Hallyu Wave into the Asian Wave, as suggested by Bae Yong Joon, Ambassador of Culture and Tourism from Korea for 2010-2012. The Asian Wave is inclusiveofthe culture and art of all Asia in the globalization thrust. It is a vision/mission that needs an Idealized Design of Systems Thinking. The revealment and unrevealment of this paper is the fact that what government cannot start, what a country sometimes cannot do, the power of youth can.

As the Koreans put it, lets go, AJA!

Selected References

Baudrillard Jean, Simulacra and Simulations, trans. Sheila Faria Glaser. University of Michigan Press, 1994

---------------The Consumer Society: Myths and Structures London: Sage Publications, 1988, 1998

__________The Ecstacy of Communication. Editor: Sylvere Lotringer. Trans. Bernard and Caroline Schutze. New York: Semiotext(e), 1988

Barker, Chris. Cultural Studies London: Sage Publications, 2000

Cahoone, Laurence. From Modernism to Postmodernism: an Anthology, Malden: Blackwell, 1996

G. W. F. Hegel. Phenomenology of the Spirit. Trans. A. V. Millers Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977

The Cultural Studies Reader Editor: Simon During London and New York: Routledge, 1993, 1994, 1995

Ward, Glenn. PostModernism London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1997, 2003

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