Hallyu: Surfin' the Korean Wave in Indonesia
Jakarta. Nothing, it seems, can stand in the way of hallyu, or the Korean Wave. K-Pop, K-Drama, even K-Indie are already the staple diet of many Indonesians. Park Chan-wook and Kim Ki-duk, if not quite household names, are hailed as heroes by many young Indonesian film directors. And not content with exporting its vibrant culture to Indonesia, South Korea is now starting to attract tourists by their hundreds of thousands from Southeast Asia's biggest economy.
Data from Korea Tourism Organization (KTO) shows that in 2008, when the K-Pop boom started, more than 80,000 Indonesian tourists visited South Korea. By 2012 the number had grown to nearly 150,000 and then to nearly 190,000 in 2013.
Since then, the stats have continued to go up. In 2017, more than 230,000 Indonesian tourists traveled to South Korea.
KTO has now launched a new website called #AkudanKorea ("Me and Korea") targeted at "free and independent travelers" (FIT) – South Korean tourism's latest target market.
The new website was launched at Suasana Restaurant in Jakarta on Friday (04/05). KTO Jakarta director Andrew Jonghoon Kim said South Korea, with its convenient public transportation and widely-praised public safety, is the perfect destination for solo travelers.
"More Indonesians started coming to South Korea from 2008 or 2009, when the Korean Wave started. But the numbers skyrocketed when we opened a KTO office here in Jakarta in 2011," Kim said.
At the website launch – attended by Republic of Korea ambassador Kim Chang-beom, actress Atiqah Hasiholan and bloggers Janine Intansari, Marischka Prudence and Fifi Alvianto, KTO also presented data that showed Korean Wave has made significant inroads in four industries in Indonesia: food, beauty, music and TV.
With around 210 Korean restaurants in Jakarta alone, many Indonesians are now familiar with different types of Korean cuisine. Although more traditional dishes like tteokbokki (sticky rice and fish cakes in a spicy red pepper paste sauce) and bibimbap are still favorite, modern Korean food – Korean barbecue, fried chicken, rice bowls – is slowly taking over.
Meanwhile, the proliferation of images of K-Drama starlets with perfect features and K-Pop singers with unblemished skin on TV and social media has also started a craze for South Korean skincare and beauty products.
The opening of a new branch of Nature Republic, a South Korean beauty brand, at a mall in Jakarta in March attracted a queue that rivaled those for a new iPhone launch.
"I'm always so jealous when I watch Korean dramas and I see those actresses with perfect skin," beauty blogger Intansari said.
"Frankly, Korean women's skin is amazing. Even the grandmas, their skin looks so healthy and gwon [moist]," travel blogger Marischka said.
Meanwhile, K-Pop is known for successfully mashing up Western hip-hop beats with Eastern sassiness. Hard-working Korean girl and boy bands are also revered for their ability to sing live and dancing energetically at the same time.
The most popular Korean boy bands in Indonesia include veterans Big Bang and record-breaking Bangtan Boys (BTS).
When Big Bang came to Indonesia for their world tour in 2012, servers for their ticket box crashed and all of the concert tickets were sold out in ten minutes.
Girl groups Blackpink and Red Velvet are also favorites with local fans for their fun mix of R&B and pop.
Indonesian dance groups like Massive Mix and SAYCREW copy K-Pop bands's dance routines and then upload the videos on YouTube. Everything is copied down to a T – the hairstyles, outfits, even facial expressions.
You can find K-Pop copycats everywhere you go in Indonesia. YouTuber Tiffani Afifa, for example, gets 2.4 million views for a simple video of her singing a Korean song.
South Korean entertainment companies such as S.M. Entertainment and Cube Entertainment have held auditions in Indonesia to find their next big star.
South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs also organizes "The K-POP World Festival" once a year since 2011.
Indonesians have snagged the grand prizes at the festival, including duo Nadya & Marwah in 2012 and YouTubers Tiffani Afifa and Alphiandi in 2017.
And on TV and streaming sites, Korean TV series, or K-Drama, rule the airwave (or the bandwidth). Many K-Dramas are aired on the KBS cable channel in Indonesia, but most K-Drama ("drakor" for "drama korea" in Indonesian slang) fans prefer to watch it live on online streaming sites while chatting with fellow fans about the intricacies of the plots or the latest fate of their favorite characters on online community forums.
According to a 2013 report by the Korea Creative Content Agency (KOCCA), K-Dramas made up 82 percent of South Korea's "cultural content export."
In less welcome development, but one that shows how influential hallyu has become, two Indonesian soap operas were found out to be barely disguised adaptations of K-Drama series: "Cinta Sejati" ("True Love") turned out to be a carbon copy of "Stairway to Heaven" and "Demi Cinta" ("In the Name of Love) simply recreated "Endless Love."
Free-to-air TV station RCTI aired a soap opera titled "Kau Yang Berasal Dari Bintang" ("You’re From the Stars") in 2014 that was plagiarized from a successful K-Drama series with a similar name, "Man From the Stars." Since the plot of the copy was exactly the same as the original's, the Indonesian version was only allowed to be aired again after the storyline was changed.
KTO's Kim believes K-Dramas are the main reason why more Indonesian tourists are visiting South Korea. Many of the Korean TV series are shot at scenic locations and fans love to visit the exact spots to reenact scenes from their favorite shows.
Lifestyle blogger Fifi Alvianto also mentioned one surprising thing about traveling in South Korea: Koreans are very welcoming to Muslim travelers.
"There was even a mosque at Itaewon [a nightlife district in Seoul], and when we got hungry they had so many halal choices," Fifi said.
"I wear a hijab and I thought Koreans would be weirded out, but no, they might not be used to it, but they were all so nice to me," she said.
The new #AkudanKorea site is here.
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