Contemporary culture of South Korea

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The contemporary culture of South Korea derives from the traditional culture of Korea, but since the 1948 division of Korea, it has developed separately from North Korea's culture.

The industrialization and urbanization of South Korea have brought many changes to the way Korean people live. In the past, most people lived in small rural areas. Changes to peoples' lifestyles have led to many young people leaving country areas to find new opportunities in the cities (particularly Seoul). In the past, it was not uncommon for several generations to live under one roof; today South Koreans are moving towards having a nuclear family.

Contents 1 Music 1.1 Korean popular music 1.2 Karaoke 2 Film and visual media 2.1 New wave films 2.2 Korean animation 3 Literature 4 Technology 4.1 Cellular phones 4.2 The Internet 4.2.1 Online Video Gaming 4.3 Robotics 5 Academics 6 Journalism 7 Foreign influences 8 See also 9 External links

[edit] Music

[edit] Korean popular music

See main article: K-pop

Many Korean pop stars and groups are well known in East Asia, Southeast Asia, and parts of South Asia. K-pop often emulates American pop music, and usually features young performers.

The emergence of the group Seo Taiji and Boys in 1992 marked a turning point for Korean popular music, as the group incorporated elements of American popular musical genres of rap, rock, and techno into its music. Dance-oriented acts were dominant in the Korean popular music scene of the 1990s. Recently, rock music has made some headway into the mainstream, with acts like Yoon Do-hyun Band gaining national recognition.

Popular artists who diverge from the traditional K-pop sound include Lee Jung Hyun, a female techno artist; 1TYM, a four-member rap troupe; and Wax a female singer. South Korea is also home to its own form of Hip Hop Artists, including Jinusean, Drunken Tiger, and Epik High.

[edit] Karaoke

Karaoke is most commonly called "Noraebang" (노래방, literally, "song room") in Korea, but the Japanese-derived Garaoke (가라오케) and various Korean alternatives like Norae yeonseupjang (노래연습장), or Norae yeonseupshil (노래연습실) are also sometimes used. Noraebang is even conducted in transport vehicles such

[edit] Film and visual media

See main entry: Korean cinema

Since the success of the Korean film Shiri in 1999 Korean film has become much more popular, both in South Korea and abroad. Today South Korea is one of the few countries where Hollywood productions do not enjoy a dominant share of the domestic market.

Shiri was a film about a North Korean spy preparing a coup in Seoul. The film was the first in Korean history to sell more than 2 million tickets in Seoul alone. This helped Shiri to surpass box office hits such as The Matrix or Star Wars. The success of Shiri motivated other Korean films with large budgets for Korean circumstances.

In 2000 the film JSA (Joint Security Area) was a huge success and even surpassed the benchmark set by Shiri. One year later, the film Friend managed the same. In South Korea the romantic comedy My Sassy Girl outsold The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter which ran at the same time. As of 2004 new films continue to outperform older releases, and many Korean productions are more popular than Hollywood films. Both Silmido and Taegukgi Hwinalrimyeo (The Brotherhood) were watched by over 10 million people, which is a quarter of the Korean population. Silmido is a film based on a true story about a secret special force. The other is a blockbuster movie about Korean War directed by the director of Shiri.

This success attracted the attention of Hollywood. Films such as Shiri are now distributed in the USA. In 2001, Miramax even bought the rights to an Americanized remake of the successful Korean action comedy movie, My Wife is a Gangster.

The 2003 suspense thriller Janghwa, Hongnyeon (Tale of Two Sisters) was successful as well, leading DreamWorks to pay $2 million (US) for the rights to a remake, topping the $1 million (US) paid for the Japanese movie The Ring.

Many Korean films reflect how much the Korean people long for reunification and suffer from the division of the peninsula. Many of the films underline feelings, which cause Korean films to be likened to French films. The Korean film industry, however, now produces all kinds of films.

In February 2004, the controversial director, Kim Ki Duk won the award for best director at the 54th annual Berlin Film Festival. He was awarded for the film Samaria which is about a teenage prostitute.

In the Cannes Film Festival, two Korean films, Oldboy by Park Chan-wook and Woman is the Future of the Man by Hong Sang-soo, were invited in the competition. The film by Park won the Grand Prix.

In 2006 the film The Lake House, a remake of the Korean movie Il Mare, was released.

As of 2006, the popularity of the Korean comedy/drama My Sassy Girl has reached the United States and an American re-make has been announced. It is to be directed by French director Yann Samuell.

[edit] New wave films

There are three important dates in new wave Korean films: first in 1992, "Marriage Story was financed by Samsung, marking the first non-government funded film. In 1999, Shiri was released and led to Korean films taking over 50% of the local market. Ultimately, My Sassy Girl (2001) became the most popular and exportable Korean film in history. Each has brought new strength to the unique creation of a Korean film industry that no longer copies Hollywood verbatim. Supporting the Korean film industry have been strong government controls against copying and bootlegging and piracy, which have allowed the film industry to bring out many films, and make a profit and still have very strong DVD and aftermarket sales. In addition, a government-enforced screen quota system since 1967 has limited the number of days per year non-domestic movies can be shown on any one movie screen in South Korea. Recently, this practice has come under fire from non-Korean film distributors as unfair.[1] Fast low cost films with likeable stars, tied to current events, and at affordable prices that speak in a natural vernacular with state of the art cinematography and music have all pushed films ahead.

New wave Korean films came as a result of competition in the film industry, directors trained outside of the USA (in France, Spain, the Netherlands, China and Europe), and new models of scripts that included more Korean situations, and spoke in contemporary vernacular, and used younger actors, younger scriptwriters, and less formulaic Hollywood clichés or 90 minute frames. The impact of the Busan Film Festival and Jeonju Film Festival in screening year after year hundreds of new European, Canadian, South American, Chinese and even Japanese films rewrote the basic templates towards originality.

The increase in competition created more films, faster and unpredictable unique story-lines that were clever and aggressive. Films in turn influenced very quickly traditional Korean network soap operas, and forced a very fast new design in television story-lines, and this then forced even greater innovation in Korean film-making with even stronger writing and higher definition of the art.

[edit] Korean animation

While The Simpsons is the best known back-room product of Korea, many other popular animation series (Futurama, King of the Hill from the USA, and also many Anime from Japan) have had the basic animation, in-betweening, and coloring done in Korea. This work is usually generic, and professional; but not necessarily Korean in tone or manner.

The animation studios have increasingly been given new contract work for Korean series. The most famous has been the animation of Korean folklore by KBS in a 150 part series. This series uses 2-D animation, suggestions for scripts and stories by local crew, and was produced "with the object to create a new "Hallyu (Korean:한류) animation" (han-ryoo/lieu) that is distinct from Disneymation".

[edit] Literature

See also: Korean literature, Korean poetry, List of Korean language poets

Modern literature is often linked with the development of hangul, which helped spread literacy from the dominant classes to the common people, including women. Hangul, however, only reached a dominant position in Korean literature in the second half of the 19th century, resulting in a major growth in Korean literature. Sinsoseol, for instance, are novels written in hangul.

In modern poetry, there were attempts at introducing imagist and modern poetry methods particularly in translations of early American moderns such as Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot in the early 20th century. In the early Republic period, patriotic works were very successful.

Lyric poetry dominated from the 1970s onwards. Poetry is quite popular in contemporary South Korea, both in terms of number of works published and lay writing.

[edit] Technology

[edit] Cellular phones

Koreans are also prolific mobile phone users (Korean: 휴대 전화, "Hyu-dae Jeon-hwa", lit. "portable phone"; colloquially 핸드폰 ("handphone"). An estimated 90% of South Koreans own a handphone and use them not only for constant calling and messaging but also for watching live TV, viewing websites and keeping track of their online gaming status. Korean corporations Samsung and LG have become world-leaders in handset technology, and Koreans are usually first to experience new features that can take a few months to reach Japan and over a year to become standard in "cutting-edge" phones in the west. Samsung and LG are the 3rd and 5th largest cell phone companies in the world, behind Nokia and Motorola, respectively. New phones are expensive in Korea, but this doesn't stop Korean consumers changing their phones every 21 months, a turn-around time that turns Europe-focused manufacturers green with envy. [2]

Korean phones from companies such as Samsung and LG provide the newest form of TV cell-phone broadcasting, Digital Multimedia Broadcasting (DMB). Over one million DMB phones have been sold and providers like KTF and SK Telecom have provided coverage throughout many parts of Seoul as well as some parts of Busan, Daegu, and many other cities. The DMB channels now have more than 7 different TV channels including major Korean broadcasting stations such as KBS, MBC, and SBS.

Korean consumers hold strong to its own nations products because of its further advancements in the technological world. Nokia and Motorola sell little in Korea as the nation's products surpass its own. Nokia, the world's largest cellphone company, has dropped selling its phones in Korea because of its decreasing sales. Now Nokia in Korea is Non-Existent. Motorola has slightly better sales in Korea, but still only holds less than 4% of total sales, respectively.

A distinctive cultural feature unique to Korea is custom ring-back tunes. Ring-back tunes are "on-hold music" chosen by the cellphone user to entertain those waiting for the phone to be answered, and are basically short music clips of popular Korean and American poptunes. Almost all phones used by young people also have integral digital cameras ("디카" or "di-ka", the first syllables of digital and camera) as well, that hold up to 6 full mega-pixels. In addition, the digital journalism of OhmyNews has put immediate news stories on cellphone video access over the past two years.

[edit] The Internet

Computers and the Internet play an important role in the life of young South Koreans today. Around 60% of South Korean homes are equipped with high-speed Internet connections, making Korea the most Internet wired nation in the world. Koreans are such enthusiastic Internet users that many popular South Korean web portals such as Daum and Naver have some of the highest traffic ratings in the world, despite the fact that their content is only accessible to those who understand the Korean language. Koreans use the Internet for sending e-mails and instant messages, for research, but most commonly for entertainment, such as watching videos or playing multiplayer computer games.

People often access the Internet through cyber cafes (Korean: PC방; PC bang). Korean gamers are famous for their devotion to their hobby, and many gaming sessions last hours; in a few extreme cases, days.

Korea's Internet users exceeded the 30-million-mark in the first half of 2004, with the penetration rate exceeding 68 percent in less than ten years since the net's wide introduction. This makes the Republic of Korea third in the world for net use (after the United States and Germany).

Korean bloggers are well known and have inspired the legendary My Sassy Girl movie. Rough estimates are over 5 million homepages or blogs on the net. The bloggers draw on diverse world influences, showing extensive travels, and intense discussions.

There is a one year prison sentence for putting pornographic material on the net. [3]

[edit] Online Video Gaming

The level of professional gaming in South Korea is the highest in the world. The country has several television channels dedicated to broadcasting video games on TV as spectator sport. Players get contracts from large companies, much like in baseball or basketball. The fan base, resembling those of some major sports, is large enough to fill grand stadiums for the grand finals of tournaments.

There are, at any given time, over 4 million South Korean on-line gamers. In the over 25,000 PC bangs there are Korean on-line games such as Lineage and foreign games such as Halo with Korean captioning. Among the first and most popular video games that made it big in South Korea is StarCraft (by Blizzard Entertainment), and Ragnarok Online, a multiplayer online game created in Korea, has become popular in recent years. Other online games include games such as GunZ, an online RPG shooting game, MapleStory an interactive character game, and Audition Online, which is similar to DDR by using the keyboard to keys.

As a result, there is a growing backlash among some non-Korean gamers: Korean gamers are accused of taking over international gaming sites, tournaments and the like. Some tournaments even have a separate ranking system for non-Koreans. A popular question on today's online forums is "why do Koreans dominate insert video game here?"

[edit] Robotics

A team led by professor Oh Jun-ho of the Mechanical Engineering department at KAIST held its first public demonstration of a walking human type robot called HUBO in March of 2005. HUBO measures 125cm and weighs 55kg, forward stride measures 30cm (left and right strides: 15cm), and can turn itself at an angle of 45 degrees. It has 41 joints and motors all over its body allowing it various body movements; and cost $300,000. It marks the entry of Korea into humanoid robotics.

Korea's second humanoid robot, named EveR-2, will debut this week at Robot World 2006, the robotic exhibition that begins a five-day run at COEX in Seoul, Wednesday (Oct. 18). The “female” robot, standing 1.6 meters tall and weighing about 50 kilograms, will demonstrate more advanced capabilities than its predecessor EveR-1 at the annual event. Baek Moon-hong led a team of professors at the Korea Institute of Industrial Technology (KITECH).

EveR-2 is outfitted with a total of 58 motors, half within her face. The increased number of motors will enable EveR-2 to add boredom and three other facial expressions to the joy, anger, sorrow and happiness EveR-1 can show.

EveR-2 can understand more than 1,000 words and make eye contact while talking through lips synchronized with the pronunciation of words. EveR-2 is armed with an embedded dialogue engine, which allows the life-size female robot to communicate with people in accordance with situations and react. “For example, EveR-2 will say ‘that red dress becomes you,' when she meets someone dressed in red. When conversing with someone frowning, she will ask, "Are you angry?" Baek said.

[edit] Academics

Main: Education in South Korea

South Korea's academic environment is extremely competitive. Korean society regards getting into a prestigious university as a prerequisite to success. Most of a student's career is focused in admission to such universities, although this attitude has shifted in recent years. Nearly all of the nation's top schools (both high school and university) are located in Seoul, inviting criticism that rural areas face structural disadvantages. Rural students undergo hours of daily commute if admitted to a Seoul school.

Secondary school systems are single-sex or co-ed, and some are specialized by academic field. While public schools typically specialize in a particular technical skill (engineering, for example), many private schools specialize in the arts. Three of the top national universities form the acronym SKY (Seoul National University, Korea University, and Yonsei University). KAIST, located in Daejeon, specializes in technology and science. Ewha Womans University, located in Seoul, is the most competitive university for women in Korea. Admission to these schools is extremely competitive.

Most parents send their children to private academies, hagwons(학원), as early on as kindergarten. These institutes teach a variety of subjects, ranging from the study of Chinese characters to music, art and English. A typical high school student attends 2 or 3 different types of these academies.

South Korean colleges are often treated as a release from academic pressure.

[edit] Journalism

Ohmynews is a Korean website established in 2000 by a dedicated group of reporters who believed that ordinary people throughout the Republic of Korea could report in by phone or by email and have their many views on stories edited by volunteer and professional editors. The idea of a "citizen reporter" is the invention of Oh Yeon Ho, CEO and founder of a new journalism.

OhmyNews has over 35 dedicated staff reporters but uniquely on any given day; more than 30,000 citizen reporters post their stories on a regular basis. They are paid according to the popularity of the story. The impact of every citizen having the chance to use new technology (cell-phone cameras, the internet) to report has dramatically changed the perception of journalists in Korea.

[edit] Foreign influences

South Korea has been highly influenced in recent years by foreign countries; initially the primary influence was from the United States. Many people enjoyed watching American films and cartoons. Until 1998, importation of all Japanese movies, music and comics had been technically illegal due to government restrictions. Beginning in 1998, the South Korean government began easing restrictions on the importation of Japanese entertainment. Today only a few Japanese entertainment products are banned and many people believe that this ban is outdated.

The influence of foreign countries has changed peoples' eating habits as well; many people now enjoy Western and other Asian foods in addition to traditional Korean food. Pizza is one of the favorite foreign foods among South Koreans, though it tends to differ from the Pizza served in the west, often featuring corn, sweet potato, mayonnaise, and various other ingredients.

South Korean dress is also being more heavily influenced by foreign styles; young people in Korea dress much as their Western counterparts do, though again with a slightly different twist. For example, couples will often wear matching clothes, an uncommon practice in the occident.

Recently, the Korean language has had a huge influx of English words and one of the results is Konglish. Konglish is the use of English words in the Korean language, whether the words are used properly or not, and it is the spoken and written English by Koreans.

Three examples of Konglish:

• Eye shopping: Koreans say 'eye shopping' when native speakers of English would say 'window shopping'.
• Service: Generally, 'service' means "an act or a variety of work done for others, especially for pay," as defined by dictionary.com. However, in Korea the term 'service' also means 'goods provided for free.' For example "This cup of coffee is provided as a service" means "This cup of coffee is provided free of charge."
• Hand phone: Koreans use 'hand phone' to describe what a native English speaker would call a 'cell phone' or a 'mobile phone'.

See also: Engrish

[edit] See also

• List of Korea-related topics
• Korean web culture
• Fan death

[edit] External links

• The Top Internet community for fans of Korean pop culture - RUKorean.COM
• Official site for the book "Korean Cinema: The New Hong Kong"
• Site with in-depth reviews of recent Korean films
• Darcy Paquet's site on Korean films
• Korean Pop Music Source
• The Korean Movie Database
• Reviews of Korean films at The Stop Button