Television trends of South Korea have traditionally been marked with tides of seasonal fads that ebbed and flowed across the entire nation, which often produced sizable crazes that extended well beyond the scope of media enterprises. We’ve seen them migrate from parenting shows to cooking series, from singing auditions to vocal competitions, from hip hop to Trot music, and the list is far from exhaustive. And this time, golf might be our newest addition.
It all started from a slew of celebrities who started filming and publishing golf contents through their personal YouTube channels. Kim Gu-ra, a Korean comedian and TV personality, was one of the leaders in this regard, whose channel now commands over 300 thousand subscribers. By all means, it was a profitable business from the start, as his popularity warranted a handsome amount of followers from the beginning — his very first video now rates just slightly short of a million views — and it synergized well with a stable, constant source of contents for senior viewership: golf.
The list of celebrities now includes some of the most popular Korean comedians, singers, and actors, including Kim Guk-jin, Jang Dong-min, Hong In-kyu, Seven, and Lim Hyung-jun, all of whom now boast a substantial amount of subscribers of their own. Korean YouTube scene is flooding with fields of green, with an increasing number of celebrities expecting to additionally join in.
The trend now proliferated over to the popular media. National broadcasters, from SBS to KBS, and cable and pay television networks, from TV Chosun, MBN, to JTBC, now entertain their own franchises of golf series.They are hosted by big name TV personalities and often manage to invite impressive lists of celebrity guests, who happily join in for a round or two in front of the cameras.
Unlike past television fads in Korea however, golf has yet to become a definitive, universal trend among Koreans, with none of the shows having reached over 7% viewership even at their peaks. Some may attribute this to the inherent limits of golf’s popularity — its failure to appeal to broader ranges of generations, especially the young. We have, however, seen the success of Trot music shows, which paved their ways onto over 30% viewership even without respectable support from younger generations.
It might instead be due to a lack of single, decisive series that leads the trend on its back. Golf has not had what Superstar K did to singing auditions, what Chef & My Fridge did to cooking series, what Show Me the Money did to Hip Hop, or what Miss Trot did to Trot music. The current trends toward golf largely revolve around a number of shows that have grasped enough viewers to ensure and sustain their makings, but not quite enough to obtain any further — and surely not enough to produce a distinct, overarching craze that sweeps over the entire nation.
The golf industry, nevertheless, is on a rise, at an unprecedented pace and over a vast range. Despite two consecutive years under Covid-19 outbreaks, the Korean golf industry has enjoyed exceptional growth and expansion in all aspects, especially with its popularity proliferating to the younger generations. Shinhan Investment Corp. reports that the number of golf participants in Korea stood at roughly 5.15 million in 2020, with 450 thousand newcomers estimatedly having joined the fields last year. It has additionally been analyzed that 26.5% of these added populations fall within the age ranges of 20s and 30s, attesting to golf’s growing sway on the millennial culture.
While it is unclear whether the media trends have directly been translated into their success, or these trends are merely reflective of the booming business, it is an undoubtable fact that golf is now enjoyed by more Koreans than ever. But is the trend here to stay? Will it mark another period for Korean popular media? We’ll have to wait and see.
Hyungchul Kim
K-UNIV Reporter
