Los Angeles is known as the hometown of Hollywood and the center of the international film industry. LA played a big role to settle as a center city of international culture flow to lead diverse ethnic communication and consumption of people engaged in the entertainment industry such as artists, writers, and film producers more than other cities. Moreover, it used to be a good test of a worldwide diverse overseas expansion as a dynamic ‘Culture Contents’ market. Meanwhile, ‘hallyu’ (a phenomenon of Korean popular culture contents and its platform that prevails in foreign countries), which began by taking the lead in Korean drama exportation to China and South-East Asia in the beginning of 2000s, built digital environment as a stable growth system different from previous hallyu influences up until recently since 2010s. Planners and producers who create ‘hallyu’ contents are currently developing the system of ‘Cultural Contents’ to be produced in the U.S.
Meanwhile, various attempts have been made for the convergence of entertainers and artists from different fields of industry that participate in movies, TV programs and dramas, which are the main contents of hallyu, by writers over the past years. Some projects are created to provide the opportunity to communicate and sympathize with diverse ethnic groups by maintaining LA’s characteristics of cultural identity, and with diverse hallyu entertainers and benchmarking events.
One example is a classic-modern music combined concert that was held last February in LA, where jazz contemporary saxophonist Danny Jung who has performed worldwide, was invited as a special guest. The concert took place in the mid-Wilshire area where people in professional fields had attended and gave a fervent response to the special event.
The reason that events such as this became possible is how Americans first accepted the famous ‘Gangnam Style’ by Psy, which was innovative without resistance in recent digital age that became an easier consumption of the global cultural contents as it overgrew internationally over the national boundary. Furthermore, I believe this movement became a big influence in resulting to facilitate artists who make and bring more of the hallyu culture into being active in the United States.
There are various forms of hallyu besides ‘concerts’ where it also expands to certain artists’ that are only known by specific target audiences. Consequently, I look forward to continuing to share my thoughts and opinions with readers as a producer’s point of view and one who is also willing to introduce more of hallyu.
Min Ryu
Producer, RYU Entertainment
