South Korea Suffers the Drawbacks of K-culture Wave -- And Reaps the Benefits
Begpacker TikTok couple shuts down account after trying to hitchhike from Seoul to Busan.
Hallyu, aka the Korean Wave, has created many benefits for Korea’s economy and soft power. Korean restaurants abound all over the world. Korean singers and acting stars have become household names. The economic impact can be measured in increased tourism dollars and sales to Korean companies, but the soft power benefits of citizens of foreign countries feeling affinity to Korea and its people—wanting to support South Korea should it face a crisis—are harder to quantify.
But the sudden surge in popularity of BTS and dramas about zombies and battles to the death has also taken many Koreans by surprise. I have heard from those who are embarrassed; they don’t want their country to be known primarily for sugar-coated pop sung by teenagers. The significance of K-culture has even caught Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol’s administration off guard. National Security Office official Kim Sung-han was forced to resign after failing to forward Jill Biden’s request to have Blackpink perform at Yoon’s April 26 White House state dinner.
I can understand the sentiments of Koreans who are slightly embarrassed by the outsized influence K-pop has on the country’s image. As an American who has lived overseas for nearly a decade, I have heard people ask if Americans all eat hamburgers for every meal and carry guns everywhere. McDonalds is the main emblem of America, and many students who study abroad in places like Ann Arbor and Bloomington are surprised that not everywhere in the United States looks like the New York City and LA settings of the sitcoms they watch. But the value of the soft power deriving from Hollywood and McDonalds (during the Cold War more so) is/was undeniable.
There are downsides to Korea’s status as a #trending country. You might even say Korea is treated as a “meme country” by some. It attracts a certain type of entitled low-information capital-T Tourist. If you are a TikTok vlogger who wants to film trashy content in Asia, for example, you might head to South Korea to capitalize on its popularity.
In 2019, while “Parasite” was dominating the global film discussion, the presence of begpackers, Westerners begging on the streets for travel and beer donations, was noticed.
Yesterday, a travel couple (a phenomenon in and of itself) went viral on TikTok and Twitter for trying to hitchhike from Seoul to Busan. After standing at a highway rest stop outside of Seoul, they expressed outrage that no one picked them up and claimed travel in Korea is “exhausting.”
The original video has been removed from Twitter and TikTok, but some remixes remain.
Apparently the couple deleted their account after facing criticism.
They also filmed a video in which they called Korea’s cherry blossoms “ugly,” and they appear to have filmed videos in Saudi Arabia before going to Korea.
If you’ve ever been to Korea, you know that travel in Korea is easier and more comfortable than the vast majority of countries in the world. As of 2020, there are 4,285 km (2,663 mi) of track crisscrossing Korea, including 625 km (388 mi) of high-speed rail. Trains depart from Seoul to Busan every 20 minutes or so.
Map from Geoarchive/Wikipedia.
Finding buses to rural areas in Korea is not quite as easy as it is in China or Thailand, in my estimation. But that (if my assessment is correct) could be because Korea is more highly developed, so more people own cars. A friend and I did rent a car to drive to a rustic guesthouse in a beautiful valley of Gangwon.
Anyhow, that couple on TikTok was trying to get to Busan from Seoul. The trip takes 2-4 hours by rail. They were outraged that no one picked them up at a massive roadside rest stop—the kind which buses regularly stop at.
For what it’s worth, some Western YouTubers have even filmed themselves successfully hitchhiking from Seoul too Busan. This kind of content from Travel Beans isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. It’s too bubbly and navel-gazing, but they didn’t demean the country that was hosting them. They were generally positive and respectful towards the people they met.
What’s the takeaway? Not much from a policy standpoint. The police can be empowered to deal with foreign beggars and loiterers.
More so, it’s a reminder of the balancing that comes with maintaining a national image and cultural projection. The decision not to exempt BTS from the draft was probably the right thing to do for both domestic and foreign audiences. It might be debated whether award-winning classical musicians and Olympians should continue to be awarded draft exemptions, but at least those areas of cultural promotion do not carry the same kind of collateral effects on Korea’s image.
The response on Twitter was positive; the blowback caused the TikTokers to resign in shame.