This chapter examines the rise of South Korean popular culture through the lens of digital soft power and the logic of the culture industry, moving beyond classical, hard power–oriented accounts. Bringing together Joseph S. Nye’s conceptualization of soft power, Alexander Wendt’s social constructivism and Manuel Castells’s notion of the network society, the chapter explores how cultural power is redefined in the digital age. Within this framework, Hallyu is conceptualized not merely as the global circulation of cultural products, but as a multi-layered field of influence involving the production of identity, perception, consent and attraction.

The first part traces the emergence of the Korean Wave as the outcome of a post-1997 Asian financial crisis restructuring of the cultural economy, supported by state-led creative industry policies and institutional arrangements. Hallyu’s operation as an integrated consumption universe spanning television dramas, films, K-pop, cosmetics and tourism is interpreted through the Frankfurt School’s notion of the “culture industry”, emphasizing commodification, standardization and global cultural markets.

The second part argues that the new media ecosystem functions as the primary infrastructure that transforms Hallyu into a form of global digital culture. The roles of platforms such as YouTube, Netflix, X, Instagram and TikTok, as well as fandom communities’ practices of subtitling, content production, hashtag campaigns and algorithmic visibility, are discussed as key mechanisms of digital soft power. The chapter concludes that Korean popular culture, situated at the intersection of culture industry dynamics, state policies, platform economies and user-generated content, provides a critical laboratory for understanding how soft power is constructed, mediated and scaled in the era of digital globalization.