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Aiming to boost social and economic ties to B.C., South Korea is tapping its growing cache of movies, music and dance.

Korean community leaders are stepping up efforts this year to draw non-Korean audiences to a series of the country’s new films at Metro Vancouver theatres, and organizers say they view the region’s large Chinese population — among whom “K-pop” has proven popular in the past decade — as a key audience and way to tap into the mainstream.

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A broader audience is crucial because the local Korean population — about 80,000, about one-fifth of which are students — isn’t big enough to bring influence B.C. view about Korea, said So-young Kim, president of The Korea Daily in Vancouver, a Korean-language newspaper that has joined with Seoul-based film distribution giant CJ Entertainment to bring movies to Western Canada.

“We have built a very strong foundation in the Vancouver Korean community,” said Kim, who said between 5,000 and 25,000 people come to each Korean movie shown in Metro Vancouver since the program started in 2010. “But so far, whatever non-Korean audience members we get is purely from word of mouth; they are people who have significant others or friends in the Korean community.