To her mother in South Korea, SuJin Kim is a failure: She’s over 30, single and not working for a big Korean corporation.
But to her millions of followers in Latin America, she has become a relatable friend and a teacher of all things Korean. In Mexico, where she lives, they know her, in fact, as “Chinguamiga,” her online nickname, a mash-up of the words for friend in Korean and Spanish.
Her success has been propelled not just by her ingenuity and charisma, but also by a wave of South Korean popular culture that has swept the world, driven in part by a government effort to position the country as a cultural giant and to exert a soft power.
In her homeland, Ms. Kim, 32, struggled with the grind of a hypercompetitive society where success is defined narrowly and young women face diminishing labor prospects, grueling work schedules, sexism and restrictive beauty standards.
In Mexico, the growing interest in all things Korean has made her a social-media sensation with more than 24 million followers on TikTok and over eight million subscribers to her YouTube channel, allowing her to gain popularity, financial stability and a romantic partner — all on her own terms.
“There was a packaging that she came with,” said Dr. Renato Balderrama, who leads the Center for Asian Studies at the Autonomous University of Nuevo León in Monterrey, an industrial hub with an expanding Korean presence. “She had all this training in Korea, in this new Korea that allows her to land in a place like Mexico and be successful.”
