Korean popular culture has made it into the hearts of people throughout the globe through music, food, film, television, skin care, art, technology, literature, and more— you’ve likely already interacted with the works of many Korean creators.

Did you watch the 2019 movie Parasite or the 2021 Netflix series Squid Games, or have you tried bingsu (Korean shaved ice), tteokbokki (spicy rice cakes), ramyeon (Korean noodles/ramen), or bungeoppang (Korean fish-shaped pastries)? Maybe you haven’t stopped singing “Golden“, “Soda Pop”, or “Your Idol” from the 2025 Netflix movie Kpop Demon Hunters, songs that all made the Top 5 of the Billboard Global 200, or maybe you’re still singing 2024’s hit song “APT.” by Rosé and Bruno Mars?

Check out the list below to continue exploring the next trend or grab an iced americano (a very popular drink choice in Korea) and begin your dive into the world of Korean pop culture. There’s a little bit of everything throughout this list, some available at our branches and others online on hoopla, take a look or a listen!

Food

The Korean K-drama cookbook : make the dishes seen in your favorite TV shows! by Heejae Choi

If you are anything like myself, the first thing you admire while watching a Korean drama is how tasty all the food looks, especially the Soondubu-jjigae or soft tofu soup. This book carries 61 delicious recipes for classic Korean dishes and side dishes including ones seen in the shows Crash Landing on You, Hospital Playlist, Was It Love, and more.

Eating Korea Reports on Culinary Renaissance by Graham Holliday

Continue exploring food in Holliday’s Eating Korea. Join Holliday on his food tour of South Korea’s in search of authentic, traditional, reinvented, and even newer modern dishes. At times, he even has to convince restaurant owners that he can handle the flavors for them to serve them to him.

Style

K-Pop style : fashion, skin-care, make-up, lifestyle, and more by Dianne Pineda-Kim

Explore some of K-Pop’s slightly older styles, skin-care routines, make-up looks, and clothing trends. Since being published in 2019, styles have vastly changed, but it’s nice to look at the style of the eras leading up to today’s K-pop idols’ styles. This is an era of style that is often referenced in popular media and the skin-care routines are still relevant to today’s skin-care routine trends.

Books

Love in the Big City by Sang Young Park

This book has now been adapted as a movie and tv show with the same title, Love in the Big City.

“Love in the Big City is the English-language debut of Sang Young Park, one of Korea’s most exciting young writers. A runaway bestseller, the novel hit the top five lists of all the major bookstores and went into nine printings. Love in the Big City is an energetic, joyful, and moving novel that depicts both the glittering nighttime world of Seoul and the bleary-eyed morning-after. Young is a cynical yet fun-loving Korean student who pinballs from home to class to the beds of recent Tinder matches. He and Jaehee, his female best friend and roommate, frequent nearby bars where they push away their anxieties about their love lives, families, and money with rounds of soju and ice-cold Marlboro Reds that they keep in their freezer. Yet over time, even Jaehee leaves Young to settle down, leaving him alone to care for his ailing mother and to find companionship in his relationships with a series of men, including one whose handsomeness is matched by his coldness, and another who might end up being the great love of his life. A brilliantly written novel filled with humor and emotion, Love in the Big City is an exploration of millennial loneliness as well as the joys of queer life, that should appeal to readers of Sayaka Murata, Han Kang, and Cho Nam-Joo”– Provided by publisher.

Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

“From the indie rockstar of Japanese Breakfast fame, and author of the viral 2018 New Yorker essay that shares the title of this book, an unflinching, powerful memoir about growing up Korean-American, losing her mother, and forging her own identity. In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humor and heart, she tells of growing up the only Asian-American kid at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother’s particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother’s tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food. As she grew up, moving to the east coast for college, finding work in the restaurant industry, performing gigs with her fledgling band–and meeting the man who would become her husband–her Koreanness began to feel ever more distant, even as she found the life she wanted to live. It was her mother’s diagnosis of terminal pancreatic cancer, when Michelle was twenty-five, that forced a reckoning with her identity and brought her to reclaim the gifts of taste, language, and history her mother had given her. Vivacious and plainspoken, lyrical and honest, Michelle Zauner’s voice is as radiantly alive on the page as it is onstage. Rich with intimate anecdotes that will resonate widely, and complete with family photos, Crying in H Mart is a book to cherish, share, and reread.”– Provided by publisher.

The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See

“Mi-ja and Young-sook, two girls living on the Korean island of Jeju, are best friends that come from very different backgrounds. When they are old enough, they begin working in the sea with their village’s all-female diving collective, led by Young-sook’s mother. As the girls take up their positions as baby divers, they know they are beginning a life of excitement and responsibility but also danger. Despite their love for each other, Mi-ja and Young-sook’s differences are impossible to ignore. The Island of Sea Women is an epoch set over many decades, beginning during a period of Japanese colonialism in the 1930s and 1940s, followed by World War II, the Korean War and its aftermath, through the era of cell phones and wet suits for the women divers. Throughout this time, the residents of Jeju find themselves caught between warring empires. Mi-ja is the daughter of a Japanese collaborator, and she will forever be marked by this association. Young-sook was born into a long line of haenyeo and will inherit her mother’s position leading the divers in their village. Little do the two friends know that after surviving hundreds of dives and developing the closest of bonds, forces outside their control will push their friendship to the breaking point. This beautiful, thoughtful novel illuminates a world turned upside down, one where the women are in charge, engaging in dangerous physical work, and the men take care of the children. A classic Lisa See story–one of women‘s friendships and the larger forces that shape them–The Island of Sea Women introduces readers to the fierce and unforgettable female divers of Jeju Island and the dramatic history that shaped their lives”– Provided by publisher.

Music

Beyond the story: 10-year record of BTS by Myeongseok Kang

We can’t explore Korean pop culture without talking about BTS, who many believe paved the way to Korea’s popularity.

“After taking their first step into the world on June 13, 2013, BTS will celebrate the 10th anniversary of their debut in June 2023. They have risen to the peak as an iconic global artist and during this meaningful time, they look back on their footsteps in the first official book. In doing so, BTS nurtures the power to build brighter days and they choose to take another step on a road that no one has gone before. BTS shares personal, behind-the-scenes stories of their journey so far through interviews and more than three years of in-depth coverage by Myeongseok Kang, who has written about K-pop and other Korean pop culture in various media. Presented chronologically in seven chapters from before the debut of BTS to the present, their vivid voices and opinions harmonize to tell a sincere, lively, and deep story. In individual interviews that have been conducted without a camera or makeup, they illuminate their musical journey from multiple angles and discuss its significance”– Provided by publisher.

Are you there? [CD] Monsta X  (2018)

Track list: 1.Intro: Are You There? 2. Underwater 3. Shoot Out 4. Heart Attack 5. “널하다” (I Do Love U) 6. “어디서 뭐해” (Mohae) 7. Oh My! 8. Myself! 9. By My Side 10. Spotlight (Korean version)

Map of the soul [CD] : persona by BTS  (2019)

Track list: 1. Intro: Persona 2. Boy with Luv 3. “Mikrokosmos” (소우주; Souju) 4. Make it Right 5. HOME 6. Jamais Vu 7. Dionysus

The Star Chapter: TOGETHER by Tomorrow by Together (TXT) (2025) Available digitally on hoopla.

Track list: 1. Upside Down Kiss 2. Beautiful Strangers 3. Ghost Girl 4. Sunday Driver 5. Dance With You 6. Take My Half 7. Bird of Night 8. Song of the Stars

Film

Exhuma [DVD] (2024) Director Jang Jae-hyun

Hired by a wealthy family to investigate the cause of a disturbing supernatural illness, a team of paranormal experts trace the affliction’s origin to a long-hidden family grave, but the process of exhuming the remains unleashes deadly consequences buried underneath.

Parasite [DVD] (2019) Director Bong Joon Ho

Kim Ki-teak’s family are all unemployed and living in a squalid basement. When his son gets a tutoring job at the lavish home of the Park family, the Kim family’s luck changes. One by one they gradually infiltrate the wealthy Parks’ home, attempting to take over their affluent lifestyle.

Train to Busan [DVD] (2016) Director Yeon Sang-ho

When a zombie-virus breaks out in South Korea, passengers struggle to stay alive on the train from Seoul to Busan.

Past lives [DVD] (2023) Director Celine Song

Nora and Hae Sung, two deeply connected childhood friends, are wrest apart after Nora’s family emigrates from South Korea. Two decades later, they are reunited in New York for one fateful week as they confront notions of destiny, love, and the choices that make a life.

Okja [DVD] (2017) Director Bong Joon Ho

Pimsleur – Korean 1 [CD]  (Also available hoopla)