South Korea has successfully individualized itself in Asia by forming a mainstream culture that has increasingly isomorphic qualities in the Eastern Hemisphere. This also coincides with the government’s public diplomacy strategy of successfully promoting Korea as a brand.

“Many production companies in Korea are recruiting competent talents from foreign countries to enrich the contents of K-pop (Korean music genre) and Zimbabwe’s artists are also candidates for such co-operations,” said Korean Embassy Counsellor, Choi Young-joon.

K-pop is part of a broader trend known as the Korean Wave and called “hallyu” in Korean. The Taiwanese were among the first to notice the invasion of Korean soap operas in their television programming in the late 1990s and gave the phenomenon its name. Until then, the term had referred to the cold winds blowing down from the Korean Peninsula.

Arirang TV, an English-language network based in Seoul, is revamping its news and entertainment programs, in hopes of promoting Korea and its culture to a wider international audience. “In Korea, K-culture, which goes beyond K-pop, accounts for a huge part of its nation branding. Our program revamp this time is focusing on those two trends, K-culture and nation branding.”

Seoul has certainly been successful in its soft power efforts globally over the past decade, and has consequentially accrued political capital and financial contracts not only in the Americas but also in Africa, Central Asia and the Middle East.

In a recent report, SERI analyzed how Korea’s hosting of international events such as the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics and the 2011 Daegu IAAF World Championships alongside the Korean wave and an upswing in global activities by Korea’s multinational corporations have contributed to Korea’s move up in the rankings of the Nation Brands Index.

"It’s surprising and heartbreaking to see so many people misunderstand and misinterpret our country," says Kang Woo-sung, who is in the forefront of numerous campaigns designed to raise awareness of Korea in the United States. Based in Manhattan, Kang has so far organized efforts to correct confusing menus at the city’s Korean restaurants, and even went as far as introducing Korean ghosts.