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Hallyu's creative content, in the form of dramas, music, and movies, has not only expanded and popularized Korean beauty (or K-beauty) products, but has also helped sell Korean fashion and aesthetics throughout the world. This study examines the various success factors behind K-beauty's competitiveness-particularly by emphasizing the interactive roles of creative content, cosmetic firms, and make-up artists working through their vlogs based on social media and the resultant convergence effects-which has propelled the rapid growth of the K-beauty industry. On top of the cosmetic firms that utilize diverse and effective strategies to penetrate the global market, professional and semi-professional make-up artists have helped spread K-beauty beyond product sales. They offer make-up lessons on social media, which has become enormously successful in spreading Korean-style cosmetics. In this paper, the cooperation between popular beauty vloggers and firms is explained through the new role of social media. This study explains how the convergence of firms and vloggers has connected and established a business ecosystem that generates synergy through the four co-operations of co-existence, co-learning, co-creation, and co-evolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous policy approaches on Hallyu have been focused on the role of government engagement, particularly in fostering diversity and equal business opportunities for small-and-medium enterprises (SMEs). However, a more strategic approach to the cultural industries should be implemented by carefully examining the role of the private sector, particularly the role of large enterprises (LEs). This is important because LEs have an overarching and fundamentally differentiated role in increasing the size of industry through their expansive value-creating activities and diversified business areas. This study focuses on the complementary roles of SMEs and LEs in facilitating the growth of Hallyu by bringing in the perspective of value chain diversification and the modified value chain framework for the film industry. By conducting a comparative analysis of the global entertainment firms in the US, China, and Japan, this study reveals how LEs in the global market enter and explore new industries within culture and continue to enhance their competitiveness. By forming a business ecosystem through linking their value-creating activities as the platform of network, this study looks into the synergistic role among enterprises of different size and scale and suggests that Korea's policy for Hallyu should reorient toward a new growth strategy that encourages the integrative network of firms where the value activities of LEs serve as the platform for convergence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]