The Korean wave in Indonesia: from Asian pop culture to Korean pop culture

The Korean wave is the popularity of Korean pop culture that occurs in several regions worldwide, including Indonesia. This phenomenon needs to be investigated to discover the historical roots that contributed to the Korean Wave. This article is based on research using post-modern ethnographic methods. Based on this method, it was found that the popularity of Korean pop culture or the Korean wave is related to the history of the popularity of Asian cultural products previously popular in Indonesia, such as Hong Kong films and Taiwanese dramas. This finding reinforces previous findings, which state that cultural closeness or proximity is one of the factors contributing to the popularity of Korean pop culture in several regions of the world.