K-everything: the rise and rise of Korean culture

From music to movies, technology to food, the world has fallen in love with everything South Korean. Ahead of a big London exhibition, Tim Adams visits Seoul in search of the origins of hallyu - the Korean wave

• Our critics on where to start with Korean music, film and TV

Last week, I was standing in a huge dance studio - one of 12 - near the top of a funky new office tower just north of the Han River in the South Korean capital, Seoul. The building is home to a company called SM Entertainment, which has strong claims to have invented one of the most potent cultural movements of the 21st century, the phenomenon of Korean pop music - K-pop.

Each generation creates hit factories in its own image. The SM Culture Universe" was originally the vision of a Korean pop entrepreneur called Lee Soo-man who, after a brief career as a singer and DJ, studied computer engineering in the States in the 1980s. He returned to Seoul with the dream of globalising Korean music".