[LINK] "1980s Boom Years Living On in Korea's Outperforming Media Stocks"

[rfmcdonald]

Bloomberg's Heejin Kim describes the extent to which South Korea's thriving media and pop-cultural industries are becoming major drivers of the country's economy, supplanting the old heavy industries which drove the country into the First World in the first place.

While Korean steel mills and ship yards struggled to stay in business in 2015, the nation’s media companies were busy emulating the boom years of the 1980s -- literally.

Shares of CJ E&M, which owns cable TV channel tvN, doubled in 2015 as it capped a year of hits with a weekly drama called "Reply 1988." The show depicting the lives of high school students during a year of 11.9 percent economic growth and the Seoul Olympics struck a chord with households in an economy reeling from 11 months of slumping exports.

The "Korean Wave" of popular culture that spans drama, K-Pop music, fashion and cosmetics boosted a range of stocks last year as companies around Asia sought co-productions or product tie-ins. Shares in Showbox Corp. and Chorokbaem Media Co. jumped more than 50 percent in 2015 on production tie-ups with companies from China.

"While the industries that led Korea’s growth for the past decades are having difficulties from getting out of the doldrums, we found the media content industry emerging as a promising sector for the next generation," said Chang Lee, head of the Equity Research Center at NH Investment and Securities. "We are neighboring with China, a major content importer, and both countries signed a free trade agreement recently."