Korea’s “Pushing Hands”: The Story behind the Global Cultural Expansion of Korean Martial Arts

Abstract

ABSTRACT Over the past few decades, South Korean popular culture has not only attracted a great deal of interest in neighbouring Asian countries, but has also penetrated the West, becoming a global phenomenon. This is not the first time that the world has experienced a cultural wave from the Korean Peninsula. The Asian martial arts craze that swept the West in the 1970s and 1980s would have been incomplete without such Korean contributions as Taekwondo, Hapkido and others that introduced the world to Korean culture long before the Hallyu of the late 1990s and early 2000s. With this in mind, a closer examination of the Korean martial wave can be instrumental in understanding the country’s current cultural interactions with the rest of the world. This article analyses the forces behind this wave by dividing them into two dichotomic categories: those originating from Korean culture and society (the transmitter), and those generated by cultural and social processes in the rest of the world (the receiver). The article concludes that the transmitter’s promotional efforts contributed to the overall success of Korean martial arts expansion to a far greater extent than the forces on the receiving side.