Japan has a crush on Korea… No. 1 contribution to BTS’ national image

The positive evaluation of the image of Korea seen by foreigners exceeded 80% thanks to the online spread of Korean culture such as BTS and the performance of sports stars such as soccer player Son Heung-min. This is thanks to the fact that it has established itself as a cultural content powerhouse beyond the image of a divided country. In particular, the Japanese received more positive evaluations for the first time.

On the 24th, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism’s Overseas Culture Promotion Agency (Hae Moon-hong) announced the results of the ‘2021 national image’ survey. An annual survey has been conducted since 2018 to establish an overseas promotion strategy. In this survey, 12,500 people (over 16 years old) from 24 countries, including Korea, participated online from September 1 to 29 last year.

As a task to improve Korea’s national image, foreigners answered ‘production of high-quality cultural contents’ (23.3%) as the top priority, followed by ‘foreign promotion to attract tourists’ (17.9%) and ‘development of a global brand’ (16.8). %) as a priority. In particular, the response to ‘production of high-quality cultural contents’ was high among those in their teens and 30s, which is interpreted as reflecting the young generation’s high contact and liking for Hallyu contents. In particular, in the results of the 2020 survey, ‘improving inter-Korean relations’, which had the highest proportion, decreased, indicating that Korea is drawing attention as a cultural content powerhouse beyond the image of a divided country.

As for the overall national image of Korea as seen by foreigners, the positive evaluation was 80.5%, up 2.4 percentage points from the previous year. By country, there were many positive evaluations, mainly from countries such as Vietnam (95%), Turkey (92.2%), the Philippines (92%), and Thailand (90.8%). It far surpassed the positive evaluation of Koreans (48.5%).

In particular, in the case of Japan, the positive evaluation (35%) soared 7.4 percentage points from the previous year, surpassing the negative evaluation (26.6%) for the first time since the survey, attracting attention. In 2019, the negative evaluation even jumped to 53.2%.

The factors affecting the positive image of Korea that foreigners responded were modern culture (22.9%), products/brands (13.2%), economic level (10.2%), cultural heritage (9.5%), national character (8.6%), and social system. (7.8%), sports (7.6%), political situation (6.2%), and international status (5.3%) were in order.

Among Koreans who had a positive influence on the national image, BTS was ranked first with 15.1%. In addition, Black Pink, Lee Min-ho, Son Heung-min, Psy, Bong Joon-ho, Song Hye-kyo, Ban Ki-moon and others were mentioned.

Interest in Korea was high in Asian, Latin American, and Middle Eastern and African countries, and in Asia, new southern countries such as Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, India, and Thailand showed relatively high interest in Korea.

Among the eight questions asking about interest in Korea, the item that received the most responses was ‘hope to experience Korean traditional culture’ (83.4%), ‘hope to visit Korea’ (81.1%), and ‘hope to make friends with Koreans’ (76.6%). followed In particular, ‘hope to learn Korean (54.5%)’ (54.5%) jumped 8.7% points from the previous year, ‘Korean wave content contact experience’ increased by 6.7% points, and ‘hope to visit Korea’ increased by 6.5% points.

Haemunhong plans to promote ‘Korea Contents Week’, a complex cultural event centered on Korean Cultural Centers abroad, located at major bases in each region, and introduce Korean culture using media art centered on the location of the Korean Cultural Center. In addition, it is planning to lay the foundation for the win-win Korean Wave with local governments so that the unique cultural and tourism resources of the region can be known to the world.

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