


Korean dramas exported to India tend to be well directed, have high production values and offer plots that conjure up worlds where the concerns are familial, familiar and mundane. They want to have a direct connect with Korea through the language.” “Now we have people learning the language because they want to understand what their icons are saying what the singers are singing. “Earlier when people used to take language courses it was linked with employability,” Rathi Jafer, who heads the Indo-Korean Cultural and Information Centre in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, told Al Jazeera.
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There are 500 Korean drama series and shows available on Netflix in India Interest in Korean language classes also accelerated. So far in 2021, Indians have consumed 178 percent more Korean instant noodles, ramyun, than they did in 2020, according to market research firm Euromonitor International. In 2020, South Korean noodle brand Nongshim alone recorded sales of $1m. That budding romance blossomed for many into a fondness for all things Korean: the food the stars ate, the clothes and jewellery they wore, the soju (Korean alcoholic beverage) they drank, the language they spoke and the beauty products they used.ĭemand for many of these products shot up in India, spurring Indian companies to invest more in acquiring and marketing them. Isolated and rendered listless by the fear of COVID-19, many Indians turned to online entertainment and fell in love with K-dramas.įor most, the affair began with one of the 500 Korean offerings available on Netflix: Descendants of the Sun, Boys Over Flowers, Reply 1988, Kingdom, Sky Castle. Considered something like Trojan horses for their growing soft power, South Korean cultural and pop culture exports have taken India by storm since the country went into one of the world’s strictest coronavirus lockdowns last year. He’s just caught in the whirl of hallyu - the Korean wave, or South Korea’s pop-culture blitzkrieg. “Didn’t you cry in the end? Episode 16? I cried rivers,” he told Al Jazeera, recalling the sweet-sad love story of a South Korean heiress and a North Korean army captain. But as he watched the finale of Crash Landing on You in his apartment in Mumbai, he couldn’t hold back his tears. New Delhi, India– CS Mani, a 67-year-old Indian, isn’t someone you’d expect to become enthralled by a South Korean limited television series.
