Arts editor HELEN MUSA previews the National Museum’s upcoming burst of K-pop – Hallyu: The Korean Wave.

If you’ve never heard of Korean singer PSY’s global video hit Gangnam Style, people ask where you’ve been since 2012, which is when it became the first YouTube video to reach one billion views.

It marked a turning point in what has become known as Hallyu – the Korean Wave – a global fascination with Korean TV dramas, literature, film and, of course, K-pop.

The National Museum has picked up on this sensation with an exhibition coming exclusively to Canberra from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, with more than 250 objects relating to the rise of K-pop and its spinoffs – K-Drama, K-Cinema, K-Fashion and K-Beauty.

Globally recognised, Gangnam Style – named after Seoul’s Gangnam district – satirises the wealthy residents of that posh suburb. 

Its quirky dance moves (many derived from horse-riding gestures) and sheer energy attracted millions of fans who didn’t understand a word of Korean, as seen when a professor friend of mine in Braidwood asked her hairdresser what Gangnam Style was – all the girls in the salon whipped out their phones to show her.

But Hallyu reaches well beyond pop music: novelist Han Kang, author of The Vegetarian, won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature, while the film Parasite won the 2020 Academy Award – the first foreign-language film ever to do so. And there’s the super girl group Aespa and Netflix series Squid Game.

Exhibition curator Kate Morschel, who came to the NMA six or seven years ago from the Australian War Memorial, jokes that although she’s a millennial, she’s “the least cool of the curators”.

Be that as it may, she’s a huge fan of the performative style behind the K in K-pop, and of the cultural phenomena surrounding it – including the national Korean love of karaoke (noraebang). Opera singer Sumi Jo once told me she credits Korea’s operatic excellence to noraebang, which gives people confidence.

That sheer energy is part of the Hallyu phenomenon. Storytelling, Morschel says, is central to Korean culture and translates directly into K-pop, which is dynamic, polished and marked by dazzling costumes.

“Everything is so intentional,” she says, even the positioning of dancers’ shoulders. Thousands of hours of practice lie behind every performance.

Undoubtedly, Morschel says, Gangnam Style was the turning point – “Most people have heard of it. It’s a testament to the power of Hallyu.”

But she also stresses that Korea already had a strong film tradition long before its global breakout – even in the North – full of powerful storytelling and sharp social critique. Like Gangnam Style, the films are culturally specific but the themes – social inequality, aspiration, resilience – are universal.

We both wonder what draws people across borders in such unexpected ways.

Morschel has never been to Korea (though she’d like to), but notes that Hallyu has had an enormous impact on tourism, with people flying to Seoul to visit K-pop sites – much as tourists flock to Paris for The Da Vinci Code locations. There’s also been a big rise in Korean language study, and K-pop fans everywhere try their hand at translating lyrics.

But we shouldn’t forget, she says, that Australia has a very large Korean diaspora, many of whom have been working with the Korean Cultural Centre and community groups.

Among them is artist Sophi Odling, adopted by an Australian family, now one of Australia’s most admired street artists and muralists – adding an Australian expression to the show.

Also featured is Andrew Undi Lee, a queer Korean-Australian writer, director and producer, who has loaned the exhibition a traditional hanbok he wore as a child.

So what will we see?

The main design thrust is to evoke the neon glow of Seoul, with bold lighting installations highlighting art, technology and fashion.

No surprise that, as you enter, you’ll be greeted by none other than PSY of Gangnam Style, symbolising the emergence of Hallyu. The exhibition then tracks the history of modern Korea through Japanese occupation to its late 20th-century democratic transformation.

Yes, the exhibition is about K-pop, but, Morschel says, it’s also about resilience and how culture moves across the world today.

There will be a reconstruction of the bathroom from Parasite, the scary giant doll Young-hee from Squid Game and K-pop outfits before the final section focuses on Korean beauty – an enormous global industry sometimes drawing on traditional products such as green tea and ginseng.

The Hallyu experience finishes with a catwalk of high-end contemporary Korean fashion – and you can’t get more up-to-date than that.

Hallyu: The Korean Wave, National Museum of Australia, December 10 to May.