Pop Culture as an Instrument for Global Public Diplomacy.

As the society evolved from industrial era into information era, there has been a shift in
power. The soft power has come into play, as the modern society moves towards a more
advanced democracy. Individuals are freer to make decisions and choices based on other
aspects such as attraction. The importance of soft power has then been magnified by the
advance of information and communication technologies, foreign publics willingly
support and follow the decisions and policies of a nation-state with attractive culture and
ideology; non-government organizations are also able to involve in diplomatic acts as
well since the soft power does not belong to the government. As the soft power has in
turn linked to success in world politics, the diplomatic landscape has recently undergone
an inevitable change which experiencing a shift from the traditional government-togovernment diplomacy to public diplomacy. Unlike the traditional diplomacy, public
diplomacy is an act targeting foreign publics and emphasizes on the communication
between the nation-states and the foreign publics. Despite the growing importance to
engage in communication with foreign publics, there is much to be explored in this field.
However, due to its relatively young age, governments have yet to remold their own
diplomatic structure to adapt to this change and are lacked of effective tools and tactics.
As demanding for more effective and new strategies to win the hearts and minds of
foreign publics, this paper has proposed pop culture as the next generation tool of public
diplomacy and has explored how popular culture can play a role for this task. The Korean
Wave, referred to the phenomenon of feverish popularity of Korean pop culture in Asian
countries, is employed as a case to explore several aspects of the use of pop culture as the
instruments of public diplomacy, with particular emphasis on the how Korean Wave
facilitated the goals of public diplomacy. The role which the Korean government has
played in this phenomenon to achieve public diplomacy has also been discussed. From an
analysis of secondary data, it is evident that the Korean Wave has facilitated the goals of
public diplomacy by 1) promoting Korean cultural values through activating Korean
language learning and tourism, 2) improving the national image, in other words,
establishing positive image of the country, and, 3) ameliorating damaged national image
in countries that had generally thought to have negative images of Korea due to either
history of war or damaged diplomatic relationships. Results showed that the Korean

Wave evidently activated the process of communicating Korean culture to foreign

publics, providing a golden opportunity to deliver the Korean culture and values through
the entertainment as a medium and boosted the foreign publics interest on Korean
culture. It significantly has facilitated achieving the aforementioned goals of public
diplomacy. The paper showed that the potential of pop culture as a tool for public
diplomacy is clear and then concluded with suggestions for the government on how to
facilitate mutual communication, build common understanding and relationship in order
to utilize pop culture as a sustainable instrument for public diplomacy.
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