<Anchor> It
is a friendly economy time.
Today (17th), I will be with reporter Kwon Ae-ri.
Looking back on last year, there was little good news about exports and the economy in general.
However, I think I heard a lot of stories that the good memories were that K-content, such as movies and music, had good grades.
<Reporter>
Yes, the amount of exports of albums made in Korea last year once again hit an all-time high.
More than 233 million dollars, worth 290 billion won in our money, it is surprising that this is so even when purely looking at the album.
These days, most people listen to music through digital sources, and this is what the amount of physical albums that went out of the country was caught.
Although it has increased rapidly in recent years, the trend of increase is unabated.
Just a few years ago, singers with 1 million copies were until the 90s, so we talked about this a lot.
Because I don't listen to the album.
However, looking at the top 10 album sales last year, BTS had 3.48 million copies, both domestically and internationally, and JYP's Stray Kids, who have two albums in the top 10, had a whopping 4.94 million copies, and Seventeen and Blackpink each had 2.87 million copies. and 2.52 million lines.
What they have in common is that overseas sales are as good as, or far exceed, domestic sales.
In particular, recently there have been restrictions on activities in China, the largest market, and even though it is a world where albums are not often bought, as the Korean pop music market expands to the world, sales are coming out that were unimaginable even in the era of listening to music only through albums.
<Anchor>
I think it's amazing to see it in numbers like this.
It's amazing, really.
But only the album is like this now.
Then, if you look at the entire music industry, sales would be much bigger, right?
[Reporter
] Yes, it is.
It has not been long since the year has changed, so it is not a confirmed number, but an estimate of the sales of the Korean music market was released last year.
I think our music industry sales last year were 8.4 trillion won.
And more than 12% of this sales, or more than 450 billion won, as you can see, comes from overseas, not Korea.
In addition to music, it is also noteworthy that all content fields, including games, broadcasting, movies, webtoons, and character industries, which still account for more than half of our content exports, are growing evenly at the same time.
The export scale of the entire cultural contents industry exceeded 13 billion dollars last year.
It is still less than Korea's top 10 export products at 16.2 trillion won in Korean money, but its growth rate cannot be compared with any other industry.
In particular, the diversification of the export market, which is desired by all industries in Korea, can be said to be the fastest-growing industry.
<Anchor>
Something is very hopeful.
However, this cultural industry must have the meaning of an industry that makes money, of course.
But isn't there another meaning that cannot be simply converted into money?
<Reporter>
That's what the cultural industry really means.
But actually, until a few years ago, there was a bit of a shy atmosphere among us while talking about the Korean Wave.
Isn't it 'gukppong' in the vulgar language?
Do you really know that much about Korea from the outside?
I was talking about these things
In the past 1 or 2 years, when overseas travel was not free due to the corona crisis, you will feel how much Korea's cultural influence has grown in that short time as you go out little by little.
It is analyzed that when our contents exports increase by 100 million dollars, exports of consumer goods such as cosmetics and food increase by 180 million dollars.
As you said, the expansion effect of K-content exports is actually at a level that cannot be expressed with that amount of money.
I recently lived in New York, USA for a year.
I came because I wanted to know America, but I thought a lot that I would see Korea more clearly.
I want to watch American news, so when I turn on the morning news like Morning Wide, there are rookie Korean idols appearing on it.
Leading awards ceremonies like MTV VMAs have a separate K-pop category.
When I say I'm going back to Korea, Americans don't respond that it would be nice to go back to my hometown, but like when we talk about New York or Paris, "You mean you're going to Seoul? It's a place I really want to visit, I'm envious." I did.
K-content has grown so dazzlingly that some people are already wondering how far it will go.
As export market diversification has just begun, the general outlook is that this momentum will continue for the time being.
[Park Ji-hye/Service Industry Research Headquarters, Korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Trade: Although the dependence on Asian countries, including China, is still high, export diversification is taking place as it advances to various countries.
The status of Korean content is increasing, and it seems that it will continue to grow based on this liking.]