Abstract

Hallyu’s creative content, in the form of dramas, music, and movies, has not only expanded and popularized Korean beauty (or K-beauty) products, but has also helped sell Korean fashion and aesthetics throughout the world. This study examines the various success factors behind K-beauty’s competitiveness particularly by emphasizing the interactive roles of creative content, cosmetic firms, and make-up artists working through their vlogs based on social media and the resultant convergence effects—which has propelled the rapid growth of the K-beauty industry. On top of the cosmetic firms that utilize diverse and effective strategies to penetrate the global market, professional and semi professional make-up artists have helped spread K-beauty beyond product sales. They offer make-up lessons on social media, which has become enormously successful in spreading Korean-style cosmetics. In this paper, the cooperation between popular beauty vloggers and firms is explained through the new role of social media. This study explains how the convergence of firms and vloggers has connected and established a business ecosystem that generates synergy through the four co-operations of co-existence, co-learning, co-creation, and co-evolution.


Keywords

convergence, co-operation, Hallyu, K-beauty, learning, social media, synergy creation

Please login first to access subscription form of article

Read Full text in PDF

Browse By

Kritika Kultura
Department of English
School of Humanities
Ateneo de Manila University

The Philippine Commission on Higher Education (CHED) declares Kritika Kultura as a CHED-recognized journal under the Journal Challenge Category of its Journal Incentive Program.

International Board of Editors

Jan Baetens
Professor
Faculty of Arts
Katholieke Universiteit te Leuven (Belgium)

Joel David
Professor of Cultural Studies
Inha University (South Korea)

Michael Denning
Professor of American Studies and English
Department of English
Yale University (US)

Faruk
Faculty of Cultural Sciences
Universitas Gadjah Mada (Indonesia)

Regenia Gagnier
Professor of English
University of Exeter (UK)

Leela Gandhi
John Hawkes Professor of the Humanities and English
Brown University (US)

Inderpal Grewal
Professor of Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies
Professor of South Asian Studies, Ethnicity, Race and Migration Studies
Yale University (US)

Peter Horn
Professor Emeritus and Honorary Lifetime Fellow
University of Cape Town (South Africa)
Honorary Professor and Research Associate in German Studies
University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa)

Anette Horn
Professor of German Studies
University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa)

David Lloyd
Distinguished Professor of English
University of California, Riverside (US)

Bienvenido Lumbera
National Artist for Literature
Professor Emeritus
University of the Philippines

Rajeev S. Patke
Director of the Division of Humanities
Professor of Humanities
Yale NUS College (Singapore)

Vicente L. Rafael
Giovanni and Amne Costigan Endowed Professor of History
University of Washington (US)

Vaidehi Ramanathan
Department of Linguistics
University of California, Davis (US)

Temario Rivera
Professorial Lecturer
Department of Political Science
University of the Philippines

E. San Juan, Jr.
Philippines Studies Center (US)

Neferti X.M. Tadiar
Professor of Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies
Barnard College (US)
Director of the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race
Columbia University (US)

Antony Tatlow
Honorary Professor of Drama
Trinity College Dublin (Ireland)