How to leverage China’s Hallyu ban

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How to leverage China’s Hallyu ban

Published: 14 Mar. 2025, 00:04

Audio report: written by reporters, read by AI

Shin Kyung-jin

The author is the Beijing bureau chief of the JoongAng Ilbo.

It was last year’s Chuseok harvest festival. As I passed by the Workers’ Gymnasium in Beijing’s Sanlitun district, a major concert was underway. It was none other than U.S. pop star Mariah Carey’s first performance in Beijing in six years. Yet, there was no news from U.S. media declaring that the so-called ban on American entertainment had been lifted.

Six months have passed since then. Now, it is China that is talking about opening up its cultural sector. On March 5, Premier Li Qiang announced that the government would “actively encourage foreign investment” and promote the “orderly opening” of industries, including the internet and culture. For a country that has long maintained a tight grip on platforms like YouTube, Facebook and KakaoTalk, this pledge to open up culture alongside the internet suggests clear limitations on the extent of its liberalization.

Korea’s response has been markedly different. Last month, the stock market reacted first. The media followed suit, speculating that the ban on Korean cultural content, or Hallyu restriction, was being lifted. The same narrative resurfaced on March 7, when Bong Joon-ho’s latest film, “Mickey 17” premiered. Ever since the ban began around 2016 — when China restricted group tours to Korea — the Korean side has found itself clinging to every minor relaxation of the ban, as if receiving a favor.

A massive advertisement featuring a K-pop girl group covered an entire wall of a store in Sanlitun, a popular shopping district in Beijing, on September, 2024 [SHIN KYUNG-JIN]

In the meantime, Korea’s cultural industry has grown far beyond its former reliance on China. K-pop has conquered the global market, producing world-class acts like BTS and Blackpink. Korean dramas have followed a similar trajectory. While China blocked Netflix, Korean content helped the streaming giant dominate the global over-the-top (OTT) market. Korean entertainment thrived across the 6.7 billion-strong global audience outside of China, and even within China, fans sought out content through unofficial channels. This “Beyond China” phenomenon was a direct consequence of the Hallyu ban.

Now, it is time to reclaim tangible benefits from the Chinese market. In the years since the ban, China’s cultural industry has undergone profound political, economic and social changes. Once a cash cow for Korean drama producers, Chinese OTT platforms are now on life support due to regulatory crackdowns on platform businesses and a market shift toward short-form content. Drama distribution channels have shrunk, and the film industry has been reduced to a patriotic propaganda machine, where only state-approved nationalist films are allowed to succeed. The golden era, when media content could drive product placement revenue in a virtuous cycle, is long over.

K-pop group Blackpink members pose for a commemorative photo with the audience in the background, during the group's concert in Hong Kong, in January 2023. [BLACKPINK WEIBO]

Is there a way to navigate this new reality? A Feb. 21 editorial in a Hong Kong newspaper offers a clue. The piece raised concerns that easing the Hallyu ban would disrupt Hong Kong’s near-monopoly on the “concert economy” in the Chinese-speaking world. It argued that monopolies stifle progress and that competition with the mainland would ultimately help the industry grow.

K-pop is now well-positioned to fuel China’s concert economy, while Korean dramas — refined over the past eight years — could help revive the viewership of China’s 2,000-plus regional TV stations, which have been sidelined by the rise of smartphones. This year, China has identified culture as a key driver of domestic consumption. If Korea can bring its proven combination of K-pop and K-dramas into China’s tier-one to tier-three cities, both countries stand to benefit. It is now China’s turn to respond.

Translated using generative AI and edited by Korea JoongAng Daily staff.