UK has most Korean Wave fans in Europe: study

UK has most Korean Wave fans in Europe: study. April. 20, 2012 22:33. coolj@donga.com sanhkim@donga.com.

Korean pop music groups including Girls’ Generation and Super Junior held a hugely successful concert in Paris in June last year, the first large-scale K-pop performance in Europe.

Choung Byoung-gug, then Korea`s minister of culture, tourism and sports, held a meeting with "hallyu (Korean Wave)" fan clubs in Europe. Deemed the center of European culture, Paris was considered the optimal beachhead to spread Korean pop culture.

The U.K., however, had the largest number of Korean Wave fans in Europe, however. Had Girls’ Generation gone to London, Heathrow Airport would have been packed with the group`s fans.

The Dong-A Ilbo analyzed the visits made between 2006 and this year by country using Soompi, a K-pop contents site, by using Google Analytics, a big data analysis tool. Soompi is the world’s largest hallyu site, receiving 55 million visits last year in offering service in English, French and Spanish.

Dong-A also studied more than 500 reports and news articles on hallyu by country published over the same period by the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency, or KOTRA.

In certain cases, hallyu suffered setbacks because Korea missed opportune times to enter markets.

The most notable was the United Arab Emirates. People in Korea believe that K-pop has only recently hit the UAE, which is considered to play a bridging role between Europe and Asia.

Soompi data, however, suggests that the Arab country has had hallyu fans since 2006. In 2007, the UAE ranked 19th in the number of visitors to Soompi but has never ranked in the top 20 since 2008.

A source at an entertainment management company said, “If we knew earlier that K-pop was sweeping the UAE, which enjoys high income levels, we would`ve entered the Middle Eastern market by using the country as hub.”

The latest analysis suggests through numbers that if hallyu spreads, it helps increases exports by Korean companies. According to the KOTRA report, “In Indonesia, hallyu, which first emerged through Korean dramas, spread with K-pop and affection for Korean games, fashion and shopping culture, which in turn increased Korean companies’ exports.”

Indonesia has seen its rank vis-a-vis the number of visitors to Soompi rise from 10th in 2006 to fourth this month, suggesting that hallyu is increasing popular in the Southeast Asian country. According to statistics from the Korea Customs Service, Korean exports to Indonesia shot up 2.78 times last year from 2005.