'Squid Game' takes Korean influence to another level and is good for the economy

South Korea has long been known for its manufacturing prowess, but the success of Netflix’s ‘Squid Game’ is taking the country’s cultural influence to another level that heralds a new engine of economic growth.

While Korean pop acts and TV dramas have garnered overseas hits for years, only a handful – boy band BTS, for example – have managed to win over many fans abroad. from Asia. Set to become the most watched show worldwide on Netflix, ‘Squid Game’ is changing all that.

Building on the success of the 2020 Oscar-winning film ‘Parasite,’ Netflix’s new show about people in debt fighting a game of deadly survival has captured the global mood and is projecting Korea’s rising soft power. It could also help the country’s cultural exports become much larger economic contributors.

Netflix says its business last year added $ 1.9 billion to the Korean economy, but in general, the entertainment industry is starting to carry more weight. Here are three graphs showing that:

Entertainment exports

The size of Korea’s content industry is small relative to the vast manufacturing sector, but it has been growing steadily. Content exports totaled $ 10.8 billion last year, about a tenth of that of French fries, Korea’s main source of income, but they are already earning more than some other key export items such as home appliances and cosmetics.

The value of Korea’s entertainment exports, which include publications, games, music, movies and TV shows, increased by 6.3% last year, even as the Total shipments of goods fell 5.4% due to the pandemic.

Even consumer products related to the so-called Korean wave, such as cosmetics, clothing and food, increased by 5 , 5% last year, according to a report by the Korean Foundation for International Cultural Exchange.

Attract tourists

The popularity of Korean soap operas and idol stars led to a surge in Chinese visitors in the years leading up to Co’s arrival. vid, but that excessive dependence has become a vulnerability for the tourism industry.

When relations between the two nations originated in 2017 due to the deployment of the missile defense system US THAAD In Korea, a Chinese ban on tourists to the country caused overall arrivals to plummet. That cut 0.4 percentage points from GDP growth that year.

Among total inbound tourists, an estimated 13% visited Korea in 2019 specifically for the purpose of experiencing culture pop and attend fan events, with a total spend of $ 2.7 billion that year, according to KOFICE.

Korea’s key challenge is to expand its visitor base beyond Asia, and the growing appeal of its pop culture helps that mission.

Creating jobs

Although still small, entertainment is one of the fastest growing sectors in Korea along with technology. The number of workers in creative and artistic services grew 27% between 2009 and 2019, while in manufacturing, a traditional engine of economic growth, increased 20% in the same period, according to data from the Statistics Korea website.

In a report last month, Netflix said it helped create 16,000 full-time jobs in Korea from 2016 to 2020 in the entertainment and related industries. The firm estimates that it contributed $ 4.7 billion to the economy in the period.