Translation: JKT48 on South Korea’s SBS 8 News

On Friday evening, the Eight O’Clock News program of South Korea’s Seoul Broadcasting System, known as SBS 8 News, aired a report on JKT48 and its involvement in the Cool Japan initiative.

The segment primarily covers the new travel program “YOKOSO JKT48” and its role in the Cool Japan initiative to promote Japanese culture internationally. SBS is one of South Korea’s four nationwide television networks. This is perhaps the first coverage of JKT48 by a major broadcaster that is neither Japanese nor Indonesian in recent memory.

Japan Transforms: “Cool Japan” Threatens “Korean Wave”

While Korea’s terrestrial broadcasting companies are bound to various regulations and restrictions which they cannot oppose, Japan’s broadcasting companies are quickly catching up to the Hallyu (Korean Wave) industry.

Correspondent Choi Sun-ho reports from Tokyo on the Hallyu crisis series.

48 young girls dance and sing the song of Japan’s popular idol group AKB48, “Koisuru Fortune Cookie”. However, if you listen closely, the lyrics are in Indonesian.

It’s the sister group of AKB48 in Indonesia, JKT48.

They appear in Indonesian broadcast programs, introducing Japan’s popular tourist attractions, culture, and so on.

[JKT48] “This is Osaka Universal Studios!”

[JKT48] “(We are) now in the basement of Hanshin Department Store. There is a lot of food here.”

This program is jointly produced with one of Japan’s terrestrial broadcasting companies. It is one of the upcoming strategies to spread Japanese content and culture throughout the world.

They are actively supporting the company’s overseas activities.

In Southeast Asia, where markets overlap, there are six countries being prioritized.

[Nakamura, Director of Information and Communications, Mitsubishi Research Institute] “(In terms of terrestrial broadcasting) Japan features a large number of culture and technology programs, and big impacts are expected. Say if the scale is about 2 trillion yen, then Japan has the largest terrestrial role…”

Japan, whose culture industry is oriented toward the domestic market, has turned its eyes overseas and is seen as a major challenger to Hallyu.

“Korean dramas and K-pop are now mainstream, while the Japanese culture industry is shrinking dramatically. I wonder how it can be recovered.”

Meanwhile in Japan, not only terrestrial broadcasts, but also the movie and character industry, have covered a wide range of content without any restrictions.

The government also launched the Cool Japan initiative under the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, in contrast to South Korea’s heavily regulated terrestrial broadcasting.

Realizing the power of content, Cool Japan is a strong challenger of Korean Wave, and content creation capability is key.

(Interview video: Han Cheol-min, Park Yong-jun)

Korean translation by Vie, edited by RHKilis.