An overwhelming majority of Korean CEOs said Korean popular culture has had a positive effect on their overseas business, a survey showed.
But far fewer businessmen said they were willing to invest in promoting it further.
The survey of 100 corporate CEOs conducted by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the Korea Foundation for International Culture Exchange showed 95 percent of the respondents saying that the Korean Wave, or “hallyu,” contributed to promoting business abroad.
In contrast, 72 percent were lukewarm toward invest in it ― 44 percent said they did not know and 28 percent said they do not have such plans.
The survey asked CEOs in the manufacturing, service, retail and entertainment industries that have used hallyu in their business strategies.
Fifty-eight percent said hallyu had influenced their business strategies, including using hallyu stars in their advertisements.
Anther survey of 4,500 people, including foreign students studying in Korea and foreigners overseas, found that more than half of Asian students (51.7 percent) are influenced by hallyu when making decisions to study in Korea.
For Japanese students, 61.5 percent said their decision to study in Korea was highly affected by the cultural boom.
Students picked K-pop (28.2 percent) as their favorite aspect in hallyu, followed by Korean food (22.9 percent), TV dramas (20.9 percent) and electronics (18.9 percent) before they came to Korea.
But after living in the country, Korean food became more favored with 31.6 percent, followed by the Korean language (20.5 percent), K-pop (19.4 percent) and electronics (16.2 percent).
However, many of the survey respondents did not predict a rosy future for hallyu. Sixty percent of foreigners and Korean CEOs said hallyu would end in four years while 41.5 percent of foreign students in Korea said it would end in five years.
The respondents picked the standardized format and commercialism as eventually leading to hallyu’s demise in the near future.
The poll showed that 49 percent of the respondents viewed the term “hallyu” as being neutral while 36 percent saw it as positive and 15 percent saw the term as negative.
By Lee Woo-young (
wylee@heraldcorp.com)
