Popularization of Korean Art in the World as a Way of Cultural Diplomacy of the Republic of Korea

The role of soft power as a key part of cultural diplomacy has strengthen due to rapid process of globalization in the world. Although, there are a lot of studies aimed to analyze the concept of soft power in the South-East Asia region, the researchers paid little attention to the given problem in South Korea. Therefore, the purpose of present paper is to describe the concept of soft power in the Republic of Korea as well as its practical application through the spreading of Korean traditional and modern art by national and foreign cultural institutions. Basing on previous researches focused on the issue of using Korean culture, specifically national art as a mean of soft power, conducted by Russian and international scholars, we will employ multi-method research design. By means of content analysis and comparative method we will be able to identify the largest countries in which the process of spreading of Korean art is the most active and determine the main types of visual art that have been undergoing popularization process. What is more, content analysis, that we are intend to use in this research, might help sort out the necessary data from studies conducted before. The findings may have significant implications to academic knowledge on cultural diplomacy of the ROK. The results of the study may shed light on the role of national art as one of the subjects of spreading Korean heritage as well as on overall structure of South Korean cultural diplomacy.