The Stressed Potato Itself

K-pop has rarely entered people’s lives through childhood. It usually appears later, when taste becomes personal and identity begins to take shape. In Korea, children’s culture has long existed as a separate layer, shaped around routine, familiarity, and emotional calm. Recent moments of idols appearing in children-oriented media suggest not a change in audience, but a shift in timing. K-pop is no longer only something people grow into; in limited cases, it is something they grow up around.

At first glance, Exhuma appears straightforward — a familiar rites-gone-wrong story. But if you pause and question what you’re seeing, the experience shifts. What initially looks like a horror film slowly reveals itself as something worth taking notes from. Geomancy, land, belief, ritual, and language quietly shape its world, without explanation or spectacle. Exhuma doesn’t teach these elements; it assumes them — and in doing so, offers far more than it explains.

Korea’s global influence is often reduced to K-pop, K-dramas, beauty, and fashion. But its real power lies elsewhere. Korea doesn’t export products first — it exports stories. Stories that structure everyday life, shape habits, and create shared emotional worlds. From media and rituals to food, spaces, and social norms, Korean culture is lived, repeated, and remembered. That is how soft power moves from visibility to participation, and why people don’t just consume Korea — they step into it.