K-pop boosts industry production by blns of won

The popularity of Korean pop culture abroad helped increase production of the country's cosmetics, gaming, tourism and beverages industries by billions of won in 2014, data showed Sunday.

The growing popularity of hallyu, or the Korean wave, the name for Asianwide popularity of Korean pop culture, has been making inroads into other parts of the globe in recent years to help increase sales of Korean products abroad.

The production inducement was estimated at 12.5 trillion won ($11.6 billion) last year, according to the data released jointly by the Korea Trade and Investment Promotion Agency and the Korea Foundation for International Culture Exchange.

The figure represents a 4.3 percent increase from 12 trillion won a year earlier, the data said.

The figures for 2011 and 2012 are 11.1 trillion won and 11.3 trillion won, respectively.

The gaming industry benefited the most with 2.2 trillion won of production inducement, followed by the tourism industry with 2.1 trillion won and the beverages industry with 1.8 trillion won.

The cosmetics industry enjoyed a whopping 56.6 percent year-on surge to 882.4 billion won last year as Chinese tourists and those from other Asian countries flocked to South Korea to buy Korean cosmetic products.

The Korean wave also contributed to the creation of 102,326 new job openings in South Korea, the data showed, saying the figure is up 4.7 percent from a year earlier.

The total breaks down to 24,520 for the tourism industry, 24,308 for the gaming industry, 16,758 for the beverages industry and 4,201 for the cosmetics industry.

The data also assumed that hallyu led to the shipment of $6.16 billion worth of Korean products abroad in 2014, an increase of 8.4 percent from the previous year.

Jeon Byung-seok, a KOTRA official, said, "We are expanding the convergence marketing activities to help small- and medium-sized firms make inroads into overseas markets by analyzing the extent to which hallyu has expanded in each country." (Yonhap)