K-pop
Foreign relations

On May 25, 2010, South Korea responded to the alleged North Korean sinking of a navy ship by broadcasting 4Minute 's single " HuH " across the DMZ. In response, North Korea affirmed its decision to "destroy" any speakers set up along the border. That year, The Chosun Ilbo reported that the Ministry of National Defense had considered setting up large TV screens across the border to broadcast music videos by several popular K-pop girl groups such as Girls' Generation, Wonder Girls, After School, Kara and 4Minute as part of "psychological warfare" against North Korea. In September 2012, North Korea uploaded a video with a manipulated image of South Korean president Park Geun-hye performing the dance moves of " Gangnam Style." The video labeled her as a "devoted" admirer of the Yusin system of autocratic rule set up by her father, Park Chung Hee.

Since the early 2010s, several political leaders have acknowledged the global rise of Korean pop culture, most notably U.S. President Barack Obama, who made an official visit to South Korea in 2012 and mentioned the strong influences of social media networks, adding that it was "no wonder so many people around the world have caught the Korean wave, Hallyu." A few months later, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon delivered a speech in front of the National Assembly of South Korea, where he noted South Korea's "great global success" in the fields of culture, sports and the arts, before pointing out that the Korean Wave was "making its mark on the world." This occurred a few days after U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland remarked in a daily press briefing that her daughter "loves Korean pop," which sparked a media frenzy in South Korea after a journalist from the country's publicly funded Yonhap News Agency arranged an interview with Nuland and described Nuland's teenage daughter as "crazy about Korean music and dance."

In November 2012, the British Minister of State for the Foreign Office, Hugo Swire, addressed a group of South Korean diplomats at the House of Lords, where he emphasized the close ties and mutual cooperation shaping South Korea–United Kingdom relations and added: "As 'Gangnam Style' has demonstrated, your music is global too." In February 2013, the Vice President of Peru, Marisol Espinoza, gave an interview with South Korea's Yonhap News Agency, where she voiced her desire for more South Korean companies to invest in her country and named K-pop as "one of the main factors that made Peruvian people wanting to get to know South Korea more."

According to an article published by the international relations magazine Foreign Policy, the spread of Korean popular culture across Southeast Asia, parts of South America, and parts of the Middle East are illustrating how the gradual cessation of European colonialism is giving way and making room for unexpected soft power outside of the Western world. On the other hand, an article published by The Quietus magazine expressed concern that discussions about Hallyu as a form of soft power seems to bear a whiff of the "old Victorian fear of Yellow Peril."

In August 2016, China proceeded to restrict Korean media, including K-pop, to protest South Korea's of deployment of U.S. THAAD systems. The move, which lasted until 2017, had a negative impact on the shares of Korean talent agencies, although prices later recovered.

On April 1, 2018, North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un hosted a K-pop concert in Pyongyang.
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