Apparently, South Korea has applied the Korean wave as a strategy for the sake of expanding its culture and improving their country profile as well as develops its appreciation to generate revenue to the national income (Asian Social Science, 2009). The success of South Korea in expanding their pop culture to other countries have also had a significant positive impact on the country as it showed an increase in its GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of tourism and culture industries (Dator & Seo, 2004). Apart from the popularity of Korean pop culture, the South Korean Government has put even more effort promoting their country by launching a nation branding project in January 2009, which the government aims to use as a tool to lift Korea‟s ranking in the Anholt‟s Nation Brands Index (NBI) and to make their brand value match the reality. (Nation-Branding, 2009) 2 According to the above information, studying on how
Korean Wave has succeeded expanding to other countries might help Thailand, the authors‟ country of origin, to promote its country to the outsiders and reduce the negative images of the country as well as raise their economic status as the consequence.
For Thailand, the country is now facing many difficulties especially from the ongoing political crisis which creates a very negative reputation on both insiders and outsiders (Thailand Tourism Organization, n.d.). This factor also slows the growth of Thailand‟s economics as well along with an impact of the financial crisis from the United States, the so called Hamburger crisis (Kongprasert, n.d.). The resolution of this study might be useful for Thai government to imply for the country and this will benefit their citizens in the future