Shifting Dynamics of East Asian Soft Power in India: Korea's Ascendancy over Japan

This paper undertakes a critically grounded comparative analysis of Japanese and South Korean soft power in India.The paper argues that South Korea's displacement of Japan as the dominant East Asian cultural force in India isneither incidental nor merely the product of superior entertainment trends. It is, rather, the outcome of a structurallycoherent configuration, one in which industrial brand dominance of Samsung, LG and Hyundai created a durableaspirational infrastructure that amplified Korean cultural products in ways Japan's retreating consumer brands couldnot sustain. The paper establishes that Korea's active, state-coordinated cultural diplomacy, its mastery of digitaldistribution and fan-community architecture, its strategic cultivation of Bollywood interfaces and the catalytic role ofOTT platforms during the COVID-19 pandemic together constitute a multi-layered soft power mechanism that Japan'scomparatively passive Cool Japan initiative has been structurally unable to match.