Preamble

It has been another busy month. That means another post largely focusing on visualisations over any kind of deeper analysis. This time, we’ll look something verging on the economic: the revenue generated by Korean Wave exports in a variety of sectors. We’ll contextualise them in relation to each other and in relation to their total estimated sectoral revenue, respectively. The timeframe of 2011-2022 is not determined by principle, but rather covers the years for which data is reliably available in the annual reports found here under a variety of names like 한류의 경제적 파급효과 연구 (A Study of the Economic Ripple Effect of the Korean Wave), 한류의 경제적 효과 (The Economic Effect of the Korean Wave), and even 한류노믹스 (Hallyunomics)!

Korean Wave Motivated Exports by Sector

First, we turn to the amount of revenue exports motivated by the Korean Wave generated across select sectors in millions of US dollars. The visualisations below shows the total amount of revenue across the sectors film, broadcasting, music, food, and cosmetics.

For another view on the relative size of each sector’s Korean Wave motivated export revenue, the following visualisation presents each sector serially.

Finally, we look at the export revenue each sector derives from activities related to the Korean Wave (Hallyu) in comparison to the other (General) export revenue of the sector as a whole.

Conclusion

From the foregoing, a couple of things jump out. Although Korean Wave media (music, broadcasting, and especially film) constitute relatively smaller shares of the total of the value of all Korean Wave derived exports, these Hallyu motivated exports amount to the greater part of the export revenue in these sectors. This situation is inverted for the cosmetics and food sectors. That is, the exports motivated by the Korean Wave represent only a small proportion of these sectors’ export revenue, but a large proportion of all exports revenue directly generated by the Korean Wave.

Taken together, it appears that the value of exports motivated by the Korean Wave grew steadily until 2021 before falling sharply in 2022. When we disaggregate the sectors, though, we see slightly different patterns. It is only food and cosmetics which experience the drop-off in the value of Korean Wave exports in 2022. Broadcasting and music continued to rise steadily, and film held steady, albeit at a much smaller scale than the other sectors. The fall in the value of exports motivated by the Korean Wave as a whole can thus be attributed to the outsized influence of including consumable such as food and cosmetics in this calculation. While it is possible to speculate that this could portend a global fall in interest in Korean cultural products in other sectors, for now that must await empirical confirmation.

Acknowledgement
This work was supported by the Core University Program for Korean Studies of the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and Korean Studies Promotion Service at the Academy of Korean Studies (AKS-2021-OLU-2250004)