Evan Barringer was 14 years old when he came across Full House, a South Korean romantic comedy in which two strangers are forced to share a house.

Sitting in his home in Memphis, he started playing “Play,” assuming it was an Asian remake of a popular 1980s American sitcom. It wasn’t until the third episode that he realized they had nothing in common except for their names. But he was addicted.

This chance decision changed his life. Twelve years later, he’s an English teacher in South Korea – and he says he loves it here: “I got to try all the dishes I’ve seen in K-dramas, and I’ve seen several of the K-dramas’ pop artists in concerts, whose lyrics I used to learn Korean.”

When Evan discovered “Full House” in 2012, South Korean entertainment sparked the world. Psy’s Gangnam Style was the most famous Korean pop export at the time.

Today, there are estimated to be more than 220 million fans of Korean entertainment worldwide – four times the population of South Korea. Squid Game, the most popular Netflix series of all time, has just returned with a highly anticipated second season.

How did we get here?

The so-called Korean wave swept the world, experts say, as the success of streaming met American-inspired production value. And Korean entertainment — from pop music and pulpy dramas to acclaimed hits centered around universal themes — was ready for it.

BTS and Blackpink are now well-known names in the global pop scene. From Dubai to India to Singapore, people are raving about cheesy K-dramas. The overseas sales of all this Korean content – ​​including video games – are now worth billions.

Last month, after 53-year-old poet and novelist Han Kang won the Nobel Prize for her literature, online forums were filled with memes mentioning South Korea’s “cultural victory” – a reference to the popular video game series Civilization.

And there were jokes about how the country had realized the dream of founding father Kim Koo, who famously wrote that he wanted Korea to be a nation of culture, not power.

As it turns out, this moment had been planned for years.

After the end of the military dictatorship in South Korea in 1987, censorship was relaxed and numerous television channels were launched. Soon there was a generation of filmmakers who had grown up on Hollywood and hip-hop, says Hye Seung Chung, an associate professor of Korean film studies at the University at Buffalo.

Around the same time, South Korea quickly became rich, benefiting from a boom in exports of cars and electronics. And money from corporations, so-called chaebols, flowed into film and television production, giving it a Hollywood sheen.

They took over much of the industry, from production to theaters. Therefore, they were willing to choose to produce films without much fear of losses, says Prof. Chung.

K-pop, on the other hand, had become a domestic trend by the mid-90s and fueled the success of groups like HOT and Shinhwa.

This inspired agencies to emulate the grueling Japanese artist management system.

Track down young talent, often in their teens, and sign them to year-long contracts that turn them into “perfect” idols, with squeaky-clean images and extremely controlled public roles. As the system took hold, it changed K-pop and created more and more idols.

In the 2000s, Korean television shows and K-pop were a hit in East and Southeast Asia. But it was streaming that brought them into the world and into the lives of anyone with a smartphone.

This is when the recommendation engine came into play – it played a crucial role in engaging fans of Korean culture and driving them from one show to the next, across different genres and even platforms.

Evan says he binged the 16-hour-long episodes of Full House. Unlike the American shows he was familiar with, he liked the way it took a long time for a romance to develop, from argumentative banter to attraction.

“I was fascinated by every cultural difference I saw – I noticed that they didn’t wear shoes in the house,” he remembers. So he took up Netflix’s suggestions for more Korean romantic comedies. Soon he was humming along to the shows’ soundtracks and was drawn to K-pop.

He now watches variety shows, a reality TV genre in which comedians work together to complete a series of challenges.

As they work through the recommendations, fans are immersed in a world that feels foreign yet familiar – a world that eventually includes Kimchi Jiggae, a spicy kimchi stew, and Kalguksu, a seafood and seaweed noodle broth.

When Mary Gedda first visited South Korea, she went in search of a bowl of kimchi jjigae, like the ones she had often seen stars make on screen.

“I cried (while eating it). It was so spicy,” she says. “I thought, why did I order this? They eat it so easily in every show.”

Mary, an aspiring French actress, now lives in Seoul. Originally a K-pop fan, she then discovered K-dramas and learned Korean. She has also appeared in a few cameo roles. “I got lucky and I absolutely love it,” she says.

For Mary, food was a big appeal because she saw such a variety of it in K-dramas. Seeing characters build relationships over food was familiar to her, she says, because she grew up in the French countryside in Burgundy.

But there is also the promise of romance that drew Marie Namur to South Korea from her native Belgium. After a visit to South Korea, she started watching K-dramas on a whim, but she said she continued because she “was attracted to all these beautiful Korean men.”

“(It’s) impossible love stories between a super-rich man and a girl who’s normally poor and, you know, the man is there to save her, and that really sells you a dream.”

But it’s Korean women who write most of these shows – so it’s their imagination or fantasy that piques the interest (and hearts) of other women around the world.

In Seoul, Marie said she was “treated like a lady,” which hadn’t happened in “a very long time,” but her “dating experience wasn’t quite what I expected.”

“I don’t want to be a housewife. I want to continue working. I want to be free. I want to go clubbing with my girlfriends if I want, even if I’m married or in a relationship, and a lot of men here don’t want that.”

International fans often look for an alternative world because they are disillusioned with their own society, says Prof. Chung.

The most primitive romances with handsome, caring and chivalrous heroes attract female audiences who turn away from what they see as hypersexual American entertainment. And as social inequality became more prominent in Korean films and series like “Parasite” and “Squid Game,” it attracted global audiences disillusioned with capitalism and the widening wealth gap in their countries.

The pursuit of a global audience has also brought challenges. The increasing use of English lyrics in K-pop has led to some criticism.

And now the less glamorous side of the industry is in more of the spotlight. For example, the enormous pressure stars face to be perfect and the demands of a highly competitive industry. The makers of blockbuster shows have accused exploitation and complained that they were not adequately compensated.

Still, it’s great to see the world paying attention to Korea, says Prof. Chung. She grew up in a repressive South Korea where government critics were regularly threatened or even killed. She took refuge in American films.

When Parasite played in the theater in the small American town where she lives, she saw in the faces of other moviegoers the same awe she felt as a child watching Hollywood films: “It feels so great that our love is reciprocated.”