GZERO World Clips
Why North Korea isn’t happy about South Korea’s pop culture soft power

Why North Korea Isn’t Happy About South Korea’s Pop-culture Soft Power | GZERO World

South Korea is having a global pop culture moment. Right now Squid Game is top show on Netflix. Parasite was the first non-English language film to win Best Picture at the 2020 Oscars. And then there's BTS, breaking records with their songs and even making a splash at the UN, further proof of K-pop's influence beyond music along with online fans ruining a Trump rally in Oklahoma. As South Korea expands its soft power, Kim Jong Un sees it as a growing threat to his rule over North Korea, and says K-pop is a "vicious cancer."
Watch this episode of GZERO World with Ian Bremmer: The Korean Peninsula from K-Pop to Kim Jong-un
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Is China’s economic model reaching a breaking point? In GZERO’s 2026 Top Risks livestream, Cliff Kupchan, Chairman of Global Macro at Eurasia Group, highlights mounting pressures on the Chinese economy.
2026 is a tipping point year. The biggest source of global instability won’t be China, Russia, Iran, or the ~60 conflicts burning across the planet – the most since World War II. It will be the United States.
While surgeons remain fully in control, technological advances are expanding the use of surgical robots in operating rooms. As adoption accelerates, so do the expectations for patient outcomes and surgical care. Track medical innovation trends with Bank of America Institute.
Europe enters 2026 under mounting strain as it confronts external threats, internal political pressures, and a weakening relationship with the United States. In GZERO’s 2026 Top Risks livestream, Mujtaba Rahman, Managing Director for Europe at Eurasia Group, describes a continent that is “exhausted, fatigued, weak, and vulnerable.”