[New Wave] Digital Hallyu and Cloud Technology

The digital Korean Wave is heating up. Beyond K-pop, dramas, and movies, people around the world are enthusiastically embracing Korean companies' online services and games. While online-exclusive content is reaching global audiences through Netflix, Pinkfong's Baby Shark song has surpassed 8 billion views on YouTube, sparking a so-called 'meme' phenomenon. The game Battlegrounds is currently a trending game enjoyed by hundreds of millions. The reason online content can easily cross borders like this is thanks to cloud technology that allows companies to provide services directly to users worldwide.

In the past, Korean software (SW) had notably lagged behind in benefiting from the cloud. Without economies of scale, they survived by relying on public procurement through packaged software or outsourcing such as system integration (SI). The Korean SW industry’s active push into overseas markets can be seen as a change that occurred after joining the ecosystems provided by cloud service providers.

AWS offers an online marketplace called 'AWS Marketplace.' Using this marketplace, companies can sell software to millions of AWS customers and also use promotion and billing agency services. When software is configured for the cloud, it can be installed and tried out on the cloud with just one click. TmaxSoft, a leading Korean database company, launched the Tibero database and Zeus8 Cloud Edition middleware through AWS Marketplace. Anyone worldwide can experience these for free.

Cloud-based Software as a Service (SaaS) is also popular. Sendbird, Korea’s first unicorn company in the business-to-business (B2B) software sector, provides real-time chat functionality as SaaS. Its customers include not only Korean companies like Kookmin Bank, Nexon, and Baedal Minjok but also overseas companies such as DHL, Virgin Airlines, and Delivery Hero. Sendbird charges per chat message. The reason a small Korean startup could provide large-scale services to companies worldwide is thanks to the cloud. Virtual infrastructure can be flexibly scaled up or down according to usage traffic. The pay-as-you-go pricing model enabled companies to invest upfront and operate efficiently.

Hancom, a leading Korean software company, provides web-based collaborative document editing services on Amazon WorkDocs, AWS’s cloud-based document sharing service. WorkDocs users worldwide can use Hancom’s ThinkFree web editor to create, edit, and share documents in real time via a web browser. It is unusual for Korean software developers’ features to be embedded in a major cloud service.

The COVID-19 pandemic has increased demand for tools supporting remote work and smart collaboration. This represents a new growth engine and opportunity for Korean software companies. Companies that have developed various digital tools have boarded multinational companies’ public cloud services to seize opportunities in overseas markets. We wish success to our software companies advancing to a bigger world on the shoulders of giants.

Yoon Seok-chan, AWS Senior Tech Evangelist