South Koreans have long been proud of their “wave,” the soft-power juggernaut of boy bands, movies and products that have penetrated Southeast Asia in a big way in recent years.

Essayist and cultural critic Lung Ying-tai, who took over as the new Council for Cultural Affairs (CCA) minister yesterday, said she believes a nation’s strength is determined by its “soft power” and that culture begins in the most remote places.

India was known for tolerance, spices, camels and austerity. Shashi Tharoor said that India has developed not only through trade and politics but through its soft power. This takes place through its ability to share its culture with the rest of the world via food, music, technology, and Bollywood.

China is taking this cultural war seriously, on both domestic and international fronts. Beginning Jan. 1, two-thirds of entertainment programs on China’s 34 satellite channels, including game shows, dating shows and celebrity talk shows, were deemed “vulgar” and cut, making way for programs that “promote traditional virtues and socialist core values.”

"The spread of Korean popular culture is exceptional as it was not founded upon the traditional factors of military and economic dominance that characterized that of Western imperial powers, or the diaspora networks of India and China," said Liew, who has been tracking South Korean popular culture for almost a decade.

More recently, with the resurgence of China as a global power, Vietnam has been subject to a Chinese “charm offensive,” as the country seeks to spread its soft power. Since the early 1990s, Vietnam has been engulfed in a Chinese “cultural tsunami” brought about by the overwhelming success of Chinese historical television series, music, movies and kung-fu novels.

Brussels has welcomed Beijing's strategy to boost its soft power by spreading its colorful cultures across globe after years of economic success, said a top European Union (EU) culture official....European Commission's Commissioner Androulla Vassiliou said culture plays an important part in achieving Beijing's aspiration of gaining more global influence and sharpening its soft power.

The U.S. employed both the hard power of military and economic might as well as the soft power of ideology, diplomacy and culture. Resistance to post-war Americanization was crucial to the French and Italian communist parties.