The “Korean Wave” is probably the most remarkable of the cultural transformations that have taken place in the 2000s in South Korea. Its phenomenal rise in East Asia took a lot of people by surprise, for Korea's popular culture had widely been supposed helpless in front of powerful foreign cultures. The Wave, however, seems to have proved that there is something positive about Korean popular culture. The popular cultural genres constituting the Wave include film, the television drama, and popular music. What is remarkable about the rise of these popular genres as a transnational cultural wave is that it coincided with that of neoliberalism in the 1990s in South Korea. One may be mistaken, however, in believing that popular cultural genres prospered because South Korea had turned into a strong market-oriented society in which cultural creativity met with no institutional hindrance. In attempting at a critical understanding of the relationship between neoliberalism and the Korean Wave both within and without South Korea, this paper focuses on the role of the 1980s democratization movement in the development of Korean popular culture. While the latter coincided with the ascendancy of neoliberalism, one can still argue that the Wave benefited from the state policies and public institutions implemented and introduced in spite of neoliberal pressures upon the liberalization of cultural sectors. This was possible because in the 1990s, the democratization movement remained strong enough to maintain the “social” as opposed to “economic” nature of popular culture. The paper also examines how Korean popular culture has achieved a transnational acceptance from the countries in East Asia. Employing a critical conception of “cultural proximity,” it argues that East Asians made a “cultural choice” for the Korean Wave because they saw in it a better life that can soon be their own. At the same time, it makes it clear that the better life will not be available unless neoliberalism is overcome. Hence comes the paper's final argument: in order for the Wave to continue, Koreans are required to overcome neoliberalism and achieve a further democratization.