Abstract

The Covid pandemic has resulted in the decline of pop culture and cultural industry in general since 2020, however, high-quality hallyu (Korean Wave, namely, Korean popular culture) equipped with ingenuity has had a great deal of impact throughout the world based on a variety of media platforms. The cultural diversity has been accumulated over the dramatic history through Korean traditional culture, colonial period, the Korean War, and the division of the peninsular during the modern and contemporary times, which transformed itself into the surge of Korean Wave, hallyu, demonstrating our latent energy to the fullest. Jeungsan predicted that Joseon (Korea) would be the Great Core Culture, namely, the hub of the world, in the end of Joseon, a tenuous and poor country that had suffered under tyranny of corrupt officials and foreign powers. The Confucian scholars of the past strongly believed in the Small China theory by having leaned on the others’ cognitive system, Sino-centrism, whereas Jeungsan’s thought freely crossed the borderline of awareness by casting off the shackles of the existed theories of Confucianism. Many verses in The Canonical Scripture describe how he mentioned that the Small Core Culture would become the Great Core Culture by transcendentally examining the historical context. That is, Korea is similar to the honeysuckle, the enduring-harsh-winter plant (忍冬草). This country has been predicted to embrace the world emerging as the Great Core Culture. In this regard, this paper aims to apprehend the beginning of the Great Core Culture by examining the origin of hallyu and the role of young generation that drives the diffusion of hallyu. The Korean pop-culture is characterized by its dynamism and uniqueness. Based on this characteristic, hallyu has been enthusiastically accepted by young generations all over the world. Hallyu, which embraces cultural convention, Korean ingenuity, and diverse traditions of other countries, is the most obvious indicator by which the Great Core Culture has been achieved.