{"slug": "hallyu-generated-19b-in-exports-last-year-report", "title": "Hallyu generated $19b in exports last year: report", "summary": "The Korean Wave generated $19 billion in exports last year, a 15.9% increase from 2024, driven by an 84% surge in music exports to $3.1 billion and a 29.7% rise in broadcasting exports, according to a report by the Korean Foundation for International Cultural Exchange and the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism.", "body_md": "The Korean Wave, or Hallyu, generated $19 billion in exports last year, with music exports surging 84 percent from a year earlier, according to a report by the Korean Foundation for International Cultural Exchange and the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism.\n\nThe report released Monday, titled \"Study on the Hallyu Ecosystem,\" estimated that the Korean Wave's economic impact grew in 2025 to reach $18.98 billion in exports, up 15.9 percent from 2024.\n\nAmong content exports, which grew 14.2 percent overall, games remained the largest category despite an 8 percent decrease, totaling $7.83 billion.\n\nMusic ranked second with a drastic growth of 84 percent to $3.1 billion. Broadcasting exports also climbed 29.7 percent to $1.6 billion.\n\nThe report attributed the massive hit \"KPop Demon Hunters,\" and the expansion of AI-driven personalization services, which accelerated the growth of global fandoms. Such a trend boosted exports of consumer goods such as K-food and K-beauty as well as tourism.\n\nThe report surveyed 27,400 consumers aged 15 to 59 across 30 nations, with an equal gender distribution. All respondents were familiar with Korea, and had consumed at least one piece of Korean cultural content, including TV series, films, music, animations, games, books, beauty and fashion.\n\nSouth Korea's average image rating rose slightly to 3.8 out of 5, up from 3.7 a year earlier. Respondents in Indonesia, India, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt gave South Korea an average score of 4.0, while those in Japan (3.1), China (3.4), Taiwan (3.5) and Italy (3.5) gave comparatively lower ratings.\n\nFemales in their 10s, 20s and 30s accounted for the majority in consuming diverse K-content and spent more time consuming it. However, males in their 20s and 30s spent more every month, a pattern unchanged from the 2024 study. The report commented that the spending on beauty products was excluded from the analysis, while the spending on games was included.\n\nmjcha@heraldcorp.com", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/hallyu-generated-19b-in-exports-last-year-report", "canonical_source": "https://www.koreaherald.com/article/10800924", "published_at": "2026-07-07 05:37:04+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-07 06:05:01.149773+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-products"], "entities": ["Korean Foundation for International Cultural Exchange", "Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism", "KPop Demon Hunters"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/hallyu-generated-19b-in-exports-last-year-report", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/hallyu-generated-19b-in-exports-last-year-report.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/hallyu-generated-19b-in-exports-last-year-report.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/hallyu-generated-19b-in-exports-last-year-report.jsonld"}}