Saudi Arabian vision opens up opportunities for Korean culture in Middle East

Industry

Published: 16 Nov. 2022, 13:30 Updated: 16 Nov. 2022, 18:28

Saudi Arabian vision opens up opportunities for Korean culture in Middle East

BTS performs during a concert at the King Fahd International Stadium on Oct. 11, 2019. [BIGHIT MUSIC]

Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s Vision 2030, an effort to reduce the country’s reliance on oil, may open up new opportunities for Korea.

Spearheading the way is Hallyu — the Korean wave, led by K-pop and dramas as a soft power to open new business opportunities in the Middle East, especially Saudi Arabia.

Once considered a mysterious territory, K-pop bands have been taking center stage in Saudi Arabia since 2019, and in recent years dramas have been making headlines.

In July 2019, boy band Super Junior became the first K-pop act to hold a solo concert in the Middle Eastern country. Tickets were sold out within three hours.

In October that year, BTS was invited by Prince Mohammed and filled a stadium with 30,000 fans in October 2019 at the King Fahd International Stadium, becoming the first non-Arabic act to headline the venue.

This year, on Sept. 30 and Oct. 1, CJ ENM jointly held the KCON 2022 festival with the Korea Creative Content Agency (Kocca) for the first time in Saudi Arabia. The two-day Hallyu festivity attracted around 20,000 visitors to its two-day event with exhibits on Korean music, dramas, food and more.

Girl group Blackpink is also set to perform in Riyadh next January, becoming the first K-pop girl group to hold a solo concert at the capital.

KCON 2022 Saudi Arabia attracted around 20,000 visitors to its two-day Hallyu festivity, according to CJ ENM. [CJ ENM]

K-pop fans cheer for their favorite groups during the two-day KCON 2022 Saudi Arabia festival held on Sept. 30 and Oct. 1. [[CJ ENM]

The reason K-pop has been bestowed with the kingdom’s good graces, despite it having viewed pop culture negatively until a few decades ago, is because Korean culture is considered to be less provocative or graphic than Western content, and has "less nudity," according to Mohamed Ibrahim El Askary, professor of Arabic Interpretation and Translation at the Hankuk University of Foreign Studies.

"In spite of the fact that many of the girls in the [K-pop] songs appear half-naked, it cannot be compared with the nudity you would see in counterpart Western songs," he said.

"Teamwork and the symmetry in K-pop tells you that these guys must have done something wonderful; the music, the dancing technique and the symmetry through which team members move says something about the effort the team and organizers have done. K-pop is not a one-man show, as is the case in most Western music bands, but rather it is a collective work."

In fact, Saudi Arabian consumers mostly used the words "cute," "shy," "approachable" and "not vulgar" to describe K-pop in a survey conducted in 2020 by Kocca.

“Experts also agree that the reason K-pop has succeeded in Saudi Arabia is because artists are not overly exposed and display neat costumes and inexplicit lyrics, which is in line with Islamic ethics," Kocca said in a report.

Adding to the Hallyu trend's potential is the fact that the Saudi Arabian government has been forming long-term partnerships with Korean entertainment companies.

The Saudi Arabian branch of KCON came as a result of an agreement signed last June by CJ ENM and the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Culture to jointly organize cultural events and make investments in content for the next 10 years.

Hamed bin Mohammed Fayez, Saudi Arabia's Deputy Minister of Culture and a close relation to the Crown Prince, is said to have met with CJ Group’s Vice Chairwoman Miky Lee and CJ ENM’s former CEO Kang Ho-sung to share his interest in Korean content.

K-pop company SM Entertainment also signed an agreement with the Saudi Ministry of Tourism last September. Princess Haifa bint Muhammad Al Saud, also the Vice Minister of Tourism, visited Korea and met with the co-CEOs Tak Young-jun and Lee Sung-soo of the agency to collaborate on tourism events in Saudi Arabia.

Fans wait outside Riyadh's King Fahd International Stadium for the BTS concert on Oct. 12, 2019, in Saudi Arabia. [YONHAP]

Concertgoers at boy band BTS's 2019 Saudi Arabian concert pray at a prayer room prepared inside the King Fahd International Stadium in Riyadh on Oct. 11, 2019. [YONHAP]

Saudi Arabia is a particularly important country among members of the Co-operation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf (GCC), taking up almost half of the total GDP of GCC members and with a robust market willing to open up to global players.

“The main advantage and difference with Hallyu that other forms of soft power do not have is a global perspective from the start,” said Brandon Valeriano, a senior fellow at the Marine Corps University in the United States who specializes in cyber security, pop culture and conflict.

“Provoking change in the Middle East is always a tough process that is more hope than reality. It will be interesting to witness the evolution of K-pop in the Middle East. I'm not so sure how much of a focus this area will be to K-pop in the future, but it's an open market in many ways.”

Genres other than K-pop have also shown success, leading to increased awareness of Korea as a whole.

Korean dramas have been topping the local Netflix charts, including “Squid Game,” “Extraordinary Attorney Woo Young-woo,” “Annara Sumanara,” “All of Us Are Dead” and “Hellbound.” Universities, including Prince Sultan University or King Saud University, provide Korean language courses, and the first King Sejong Institute, a Korean language institute, opened last September in Riyadh.

Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF), a $500-billion sovereign wealth fund chaired by Prince Mohammed, has been investing in Korean game companies, too.

The fund bought a 5 percent stake in Nexon for $883 million, making the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund the fourth largest shareholder last February, and a 6.69 percent stake in game publisher NCSoft, becoming the fourth largest shareholder, also in February.

Girl group NewJeans performs during the first KCON held in Saudi Arabia this year on Sept. 30 and Oct. 1. [CJ ENM]

Singer Sunmi performs during the first KCON held in Saudi Arabia this year on Sept. 30 and Oct. 1. [CJ ENM]

But one thing that the Korean companies must take caution with is the human rights issues in the Middle East, according to Aleydis Nissen, a postdoc researcher at Leiden Law school who wrote the column "This is South Korea's K-pop Soft Power Moment" for The Diplomat last February.

K-pop has come to be associated with open-mindedness and female empowerment in recent years in Saudi Arabia, which is why K-pop companies must take caution in their moves, she said.

“Saudi citizens live under an authoritarian regime, but the citizens are not responsible for the country’s institutional human rights abuses,” she said.

“K-pop agencies should remain very careful when they plan live concerts or gatherings. They need to make sure that they do not become involved in human rights violations through their business relationships […] If K-pop agencies can cover these essential basics and protect the reputations of their artists, then they can bring about some real change.”

BY YOON SO-YEON [yoon.soyeon@joongang.co.kr]