The first stream was led by Yon-sama and Jiwoo-heme. On the back of them, TVXQ and Boa became the second stream. And now, the third stream is arrived by Girls-generation and KARA. The appearance and prevalence of the Korean pop culture in Japan is one of the hot issues. It is so-called the Korean Wave. The public cultural Korean Wave affects to various countries, but situation in Japan receives the best attention and success. Even lots of entertainers treat entering Japan is the first step of being a leader of Korean Wave. These circumstances which Korean wave is prevail in Japan greatly are because of the similar culture treats, unique style, and triumph of history.
First of all, alike cultural atmosphere and looks of Korean and Japanese are the reason. The Korean and Japanese are all the East Asian, so their looking is familiar with each other. Also, The lineal distance between the City Hall of Seoul and Tokyo Metropolitan Government Office Building is only about 838km. Because of this short distance, Japan and Korea have had lots of interchanges and kept deep relationship. For example, during Japanese Invasion of Korea in 1592, Kang-Hang, a classical scholar in the Joseon, disseminated the doctrines of Chu-tzu. After this, Japanese began to serve the Japanese emperor even though it was Japan’s feudal government. Also, Japan spread suit and hair in Korea during Japanese imperialism. So, people in Korea start to hair cut shortly matched with the suit. These lots of sharing make Korea and Japan develop similar cultural style, so Korean pop culture don’t cause sense of difference to Japan. These similarities make Korean culture be popular.
Another reason is a difference. Even though Korea and Japan have shared lots of ideas and style, they are still different country, so they have their own pop culture style. The most famous Japanese pop culture is animations and cartoons. Many Japanese youth like costume play which dress up as a cartoon character and they get familiar with story plot of animations. This tendency affects to other culture industry such as drama and group-singers. Japanese dramas and singers tend to follow the plot of animations. They include kinds of fantasy, cute scene, and make up looked like certain character which can be found in cartoon story. Also, the fan of group singers is almost men. On the other hand, Korean pop culture tends to be Western. It means that Korean public culture, especially group singers, tends to be sexy, chic, and strong-minded. This sort of image is not common in Japan, so it can have unique advantage compared to Japanese culture. Also, this appeal to Japanese women and it can be more spread to Japanese culture industry.
The last one is emotional power of historical relationship between Korea and Japan. It is well known that Japan conquered Korea for long years. During Japanese colonial era, Korean lost many not only cultural heritages but also cultural spirits. The life of suppression was deeply remained still in Korean. The idea of repression from Japan seems to lead to try to enter Japanese culture using Korean own pop culture. This is another version of conquering and colonial. Through diffusing Korean culture in Japan powerfully, Korean looks like to feel triumph. The past colonial era is compensated by recent cultural permeate without gun and knife. The historical uneasy relationship with Japan becomes a catalyst for Korean to concentrate on Korean wave in Japan. This focus leads people put every effort to advance in Japan and be succeed. Because of this effort, Korean pop culture can be more spread in Japan than any other country.
The globalization makes people all around the world can share own culture. The culture which was considered as endemic thing in the past now becomes a most powerful weapon to percolate to other country. Many countries try to make unique symbolic of showing their own culture and spread it to others for occupying superiority in culture field. With this main stream, Korea also makes effort for holing a dominate position in culture, informing Korea or earning foreign currency. In this effort, the three things such as the familiar cultural features, differences with opponent country, and historical relationship make Korean effort prevail in Japan particularly.
Hana,
I think this essay is interesting, but you’re making a classic mistake in your last paragraph (at least): you’re trying to explain why Korean pop culture is popular in Japan by focusing on how Koreans think about the phenomenon. Obviously, Koreans want their pop culture to be popular in Japan in part as some kind of “overcoming” of their own subjugation by Japan (and the same goes for America); however, to whatever degree Korean pop music is popular in Japan, it’s popular because Japanese people have embraced it — that is, you need to look at the Japanese, not the Korean, perspective, if you want to explain this success…
Since you mention the colonial era, I’ll recommend this book as a starting point to understanding how misguided parts of your essay are. For example, during the colonial period, there were obviously Japanese who did not respect Korean traditional culture… but there were also scholars, artists, and collectors who were very interested in, and very busy studying and writing about and “preserving” (yes, in Japanese museums) Korean culture.
Please be careful to understand that I am not praising Japan’s behavior at this time — even the sympathetic Japanese who “preserved” art objects sometimes did this by stealing them (though at the time, they argued, Koreans didn’t seem to be preserving their art objects from the past — a claim I don’t know enough about to discuss); but the more general reason these more “sympathetic” Japanese were looking at Korean culture was still mostly in a way that placed Japan higher and Korean lower in terms of importance and power. (To keep it simple, Japanese looked at Korea as a kind of idealized, innocent, “primitive” past that the Japanese felt they has lost, and which they used to explain their own anxieties about modernity.) But the fact remains that it’s not an exaggeration to call the recent “Korean Wave” not the first, but the second Korean wave in Japan — the first was during the colonial era. (One example from the book is how a “Korean arirang” became a top pop hit in Japan many times from 1930 to 1970 or 1980, if I remember right.)
Again, don’t get me wrong: I despise colonialism in all forms. But the colonial era is complex, and there was, during that time, a huge interest among Japanese in Korean pop culture. (And many Korean artists, performers, and so on in had careers in Japan because of this, such as the dancer Choi Seung-hee, who popularized modernized versions of Korean dances in Japan, and scandalized Koreans with her “sexy” costumes and “immoral” behavior. In fact, it would be very interesting to look at whether more parallels exist between figures like Choi Seung-hee and recent Korean pop culture figures: for all that you say K-pop is more “Western” than J-pop, from a Western point of view, K-pop and J-pop seem to have a lot more in common with one another than with Western pop. (For example, a preference for large groups of young females dancing and singing, or a tendency to stylize performers as younger than they are, or even schoolgirl/schoolboy-like.)
Therefore, I wonder what the differences between Korean and Japanese pop culture are from a Japanese perspective: maybe K-pop stars are seen as more sexual because (as during the colonial era) they are seen as more “primal” (in a way I think is sadly similar to how some white Western audiences look at African-American pop music performers today). Alternately, maybe Japanese see differences that Koreans might not realize, like that Korean youth are more “wild” and “carefree” or something like that. I’ve heard interviews with Japanese women who liked Korean male pop stars because they perceived those men as more “feminine” and “sensitive” than Japanese men. (This was part of the huge craze for Bae Yong-Jun/Yon-sama in Japan.)
Anyway, just thoughts. You seem to have mastered the 5-paragraph essay structure in general. There are awkwardnesses in some of your essays, but I think the best remedy for that would be sitting down and reading a lot in English, attentively. Since you asked for a little more help, if you want some pointers, make an appointment with me in January and we can look at some of your weak spots in some of these essays.
Oh, and… you mean “traits”, not “treats,” right?