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The rise of k-pop, and what it reveals about society and culture.

Initially a musical subculture popular in South Korea during the 1990s, Korean Pop, or K-pop, has transformed into a global cultural phenomenon.

Characterized by catchy hooks, polished choreography, grandiose live performances, and impeccably produced music videos, K-pop — including music by groups like BTS and BLACKPINK — now frequently tops the Billboard charts, attracts a fiercely dedicated online following, and generates billions of dollars.

Yale sociologist Grace Kao, who became fascinated with the music after watching a 2019 performance by BTS on Saturday Night Live, now studies the subgenres of K-pop and its cultural, sociological, and political effects.

Kao, the IBM Professor of Sociology and professor of ethnicity, race, and migration in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and director of the Center on Empirical Research in Stratification and Inequality (CERSI), recently spoke with Yale News about the kinds of research her interest in K-pop has prompted, why the genre’s rise has been important to so many Asian Americans, and why she urges today’s students to become familiar with various musical genres.

The interview has been edited and condensed.

You have said that watching BTS on Saturday Night Live changed your view of K-pop. How did that performance transform your interest in K-pop from a personal one into an academic one?

Grace Kao: I saw that performance, and it stayed in the back of my mind. Then, when we were on lockdown because of COVID, being stuck at home set the stage for having time to watch more K-pop videos. At first, I was just watching them for fun. I knew K-pop was something important, but I didn’t know anything about it. I thought “I should educate myself on this.” My current research collaborator, Wonseok Lee [an ethnomusicologist and a musician at Washington University], and a Yale graduate student, Meera Choi, who’s Korean, offered guidance.

I’ve always been interested in race and ethnicity and Asian Americans. I knew in my gut that K-pop was important, but it was hard to figure out exactly how I could work on it, since I’m a quantitative sociologist. What's fun about being a researcher and being in academia is that we can learn new things and push ourselves. I think that’s the best part of this job.

Grace Kao recommends this playlist to get started.

When I started working on it, I tried to learn without having a clear research question. Then, along with my collaborator, Lee, we started thinking about papers that we could work on together. I was also able to take first-semester Korean, so now I can read Korean, and Choi and I can begin working on different research papers.

What kinds of research are you doing?

Kao: One paper is about the link between ’80s synth-pop and very current K-pop. Others have argued that K-pop borrows heavily from American Black music — R&B, hip hop, and so forth. And it’s true, but we’re arguing that K-pop has links to all these different genres because the production is much faster. We also finished another paper looking at the links between New Wave synth-pop to Japanese city pop [which was also popular in the 1980s] and a Korean version of city pop. And we’re probably going to start a reggae paper next.

In another project, with two data scientists we’re looking at Twitter data related to a 2021 BTS tweet that happened about a week after a gunman in Atlanta murdered eight women, including six of Asian descent. The tweet, which was about #StopAsianHate, or #StopAAPIHate, was the most retweeted tweet of the year. Everyone in that world knows that K-pop is extremely influential, but there are moments now where it seems like it’s ripe for political action because fans are already really organized. We’re looking at how the conversation about the shootings before and after they tweeted changed. The analysis involves millions of tweets, so it's very data intensive work.

Last March you gave a talk on campus in which you talked about the role of K-pop in “transformative possibilities for Asian Americans.” What is an example of those possibilities?

Kao: Partly it’s just visibility. The SNL performance by BTS was really important for people. Especially people my age, we had never seen a bunch of East Asian people on the stage singing in a non-English, non-Western language. I knew that was an important moment regardless of whether or not you like the music or the performance.

I think during COVID, BTS made Asian faces more visible. They were on the cover of Time magazine, every major publication. They were everywhere. But it also brought up questions of xenophobia. People were making fun of them because of how they looked. At the time there was also the extra baggage that comes with being Asian. But any time BTS were attacked, because their fandom is so big and so passionate, their fans would jump on anyone who did anything to them. Then journalists would cover it, and suddenly there were all these stories about how you shouldn’t be racist against Asians.

Many of us who study Asian Americans have observed over time that it often seems acceptable for people to make fun of Asian things. Just by virtue of the fact that it’s [BTS], that their fans are protecting them, and that that gets elevated to the news is a big deal. President Biden invited them to the White House. These are all things I would have had trouble imagining even just five years ago.

You teach a first-year seminar, “Race and Place in British New Wave, K-pop, and Beyond,” which focuses on the emphasis on aesthetics in both genres’ popularity. What understanding do you hope students walk away with?

Kao: I want students to take pop culture very seriously. Sometimes pop music seems not serious, but so many people consume it that it can have pervasive and serious consequences on how people see folks of different race, ethnic, gender, and national identities.

Another thing I wanted students to learn about is genres of music. Students today like music, but they consume it very differently than people did when in college. We listened to the radio or watched MTV, so we were fed something from a DJ or from actual people who were programming the content. You’d end up listening to a lot of music that you didn’t like, but you’d also have a better sense of genres than students now. Today students consume music through Spotify or YouTube and so forth, which use algorithms to give you songs that are similar to the songs you liked, but not necessarily from the same genre. Students can have diverse and wide-ranging experiences with music, but I found that they have trouble identifying that any particular song is part of a genre. So I feel like it’s important for them to listen to a lot of music.

I want them to consume it because sometimes we think we can comment on things that we don’t know anything about. We don’t actually consume it. I think it’s important for students to walk away knowing something about these genres and to be able to identify them: this is a reggae song, this is a ska song, this is synth-pop, et cetera.

What K-pop groups are you currently into?

Kao: Besides BTS, I enjoy listening to groups such as SEVENTEEN, ENHYPEN, NewJeans, Super Junior, and new group TRENDZ.

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The Rise and Rise of K-Pop: A Pocket History

Department of Music, SOAS University of London

• Published: 14 July 2021
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K-pop, Korean popular music, is a central component in Korea’s cultural exports. It helps brand Korea, and through sponsorships and tie-ups, generates attention for Korea that goes well beyond the music and media industries. This essay traces the history of Korean popular music, from its emergence in the early decades of the twentieth century, through the influence of America on South Korea’s cultural development and the assimilation of genres such as rap, reggae, punk, and hip hop, to the international success of Psy’s ‘Gangnam Style’ and the idol group BTS. It explores the rise of entertainment companies, how they overcame the digital challenge, and how their use of restrictive contracts created today’s cultural economy. It introduces issues of gender and sexuality, and outlines how music videos and social media have been used to leverage fandom.

Introduction

In December 2018, the Korea Foundation reported there were 89.19 million fans of Korean popular culture, who together populated 1,843 clubs in 113 countries outside Korea. 1 The total had increased 22 percent since 2017, mostly because of the success of a single K-pop idol group, BTS. There was, though, much more behind the story, not least Psy’s ‘Gangnam Style,’ YouTube views of which by April 2020 had surpassed 3.6 billion. The rise of K-pop is a recent phenomenon: the first edition of World Music: The Rough Guide commented that although Korea had gone through a period of staggering economic development, in pop music there was “nothing to match the remarkable contemporary sounds of Indonesia, Okinawa or Japan” ( Kawakami and Fisher 1994 , 470). A year later, John Lent’s Asian Popular Culture (1995) omitted Korea entirely, and even in 2004, Chun, Rossiter, and Shoesmith’s Refashioning Pop Music in Asia included Korea solely in a discussion of a solitary Korean singer working in Japan. This essay attempts to offer an overview of K-pop’s remarkable recent history, although I admit at the outset that doing so is, because of K-pop’s amazing vitality, increasingly difficult to achieve. 2

Local and Regional: The Beginnings of Korean Pop

The story begins with the rise of the recording industry in the early twentieth century. Korea was a Japanese colony from 1910 to 1945, so early labels and studios were based across the East Sea in Japan, and Korea served, as Yamauchi puts it, as the “arena where the Japanese recording industry embarked on an imperialist undertaking” (2012, 146–147). By the late 1920s, six recording companies headquartered in Japan had Korean subsidiaries—Columbia, Victor, Polydor, Teichiku (allied to Okeh in Korea), Taihei (allied to T’aep’yŏng), and Chieron. Korean fixers negotiated relationships with Japanese companies, although, not least because Korean singers traveled to Japan to record, their activities and impact are debated (see, e.g., Pak 1992 ; Chang 2006 , 38–129; Yamauchi 2009 ; Choi 2015 ). By the 1930s, some Korean musicians and composers, such as Ri Myŏnsang (1909–1989)—who later became North Korea’s most celebrated composer—settled in Japan, where they worked for studios. Whether Korean popular songs were distinctive from Japanese equivalents has long been argued. The Japanese term ryūkōka (popular/trendy + song) was first used in Japan in 1914 in regard to ‘Katyusha’s Song,’ and one of the earliest equivalent Korean yuhaengga , 3 recorded in 1925, was ‘ Saŭi ch’anmi ’ (Adoration of Death), based on Ivanovich’s ‘Waves of the Danube’ and remembered primarily for the tragic suicide of its singer as she returned from Japan to Korea by boat after recording it. Ryūkōka were particularly associated with the Japanese composer Koga Masao (1904–1978), and Korean commentators argue he was influenced by Korean music because he grew up in the Korean port of Inch’ŏn to Seoul’s west. Japanese commentators would disagree, but it is hard to deny that Japanese evolutions, through to the still current enka (see Yano 2002 , 28–44), match, at least in terms of modes and the persistent foxtrot rhythm, today’s Korean t’ŭrŏt’ŭ . 4

A second popular song style emerged in the 1930s, shin minyo (new folksongs), which, although sharing a Japanese term for songs associated with companies and institutions, referred in Korea to composed songs given in a high tessitura that typically used traditionesque compound meters. These were often backed by the popular dance band, at times adding a few Korean instruments. The term shin minyo first appeared in a March 14, 1931, announcement in the Korea Daily News ( Chosŏn ilbo ) of two new songs by Hong Nanp’a (Hong Yonghu; 1897 or 1898–1941)—‘ Panga tchinnŭn saekshi norae ’ (Song of the Milling Girl) and ‘ Noksŭn karakchi ’ (Rusty Ring). The last song identified as a shin minyo was recorded in 1943 ( Yi 1997 , 372–388; Chang 2006 , 244–274).

At the end of World War II, Korea was divided in two. After 1200 years as a unified state, this had nothing to do with Koreans, but was designed to ensure the Allies maintained a foothold on the Asian mainland after Japan capitulated—the dividing line between the two parts was drawn up by desk officers in Washington. Many musicians settled in, what in 1948 became, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea), where ideology required all music to be popular. There, although it was claimed that all Japanese influence was abandoned as national identity was built, the yuhaengga style continued as yesul kayo (art songs). 5 Because censors checked lyrics, ensuring they unambiguously carried ideologically sound messages, songs dominated music production. Song arrangements became the basis of all instrumental and orchestral compositions, and with ‘ P’i pada ’ (Sea of Blood), premiered in 1971 as the first hyŏngmyŏng kagŭk (revolutionary opera), song operas 6 were normalized, abandoning recitatives and arias in favor of couplets ( chŏlga ) and off-stage choruses ( pangch’ang ) ( Howard 2020 , 101–175 and 222–230). Pop music arrived in 1983, in the form of an authorized band, Wangjaesan Light Music Band (Wangjaesan kyŏng ŭmaktan, the “light music” tag marking a continuation of yuhaengga ). The band took its name from a 1933 meeting of guerrillas presided over by Kim Il Sung. Pochonbo Electronic Ensemble (Poch’ŏnbo chŏngja aktan) launched two years later, named after the site of a 1937 battle led by Kim Il Sung. These have now given way to an updated pop style epitomized by Moranbong, an all-girl group which debuted on June 6, 2012 ( Howard 2020 , 242–267).

In contrast, the southern part of the peninsula was initially placed under American trusteeship. The remainder of this essay considers only South Korea, which became the Republic of Korea with the election of Syngman Rhee as president in 1948. The Korean War of 1950–1953 ensured that American popular forms, broadcast by the American Forces Network (AFN; in Korea, AFKN), would frame much domestic popular music ( Maliangkay 2006 ). Local musicians were hired to cover American chart songs wherever American GIs were stationed ( Shin et al. 1998a , 18–35), and to serve hotels and entertainment venues which catered for foreigners ( Maliangkay 2020 ). This helped create a new type of group, notable early examples of which were the Chŏgori [Jacket] Sisters, Arirang Brothers, and the Kim Sisters. These developed rich repertoires that mixed “Oriental” songs, American pop, and folksongs; the Kim Sisters became stars in the United States, appearing on the Dinah Shore, Dean Martin, and Hollywood Shows, and more. Hollywood films were screened in Korea, leading to a mid-1950s mambo craze and then introducing rock ’n’ roll and twist, although social conservatism coupled with strict censorship to ensure domestic airwaves avoided any American excesses.

Yuhaengga ’s supposed Japanese “color” led to a selective ban that began with Lee Mija’s ‘ Tongbaek Agassi ’ (White Flower Lady) in 1964 ( Pak 2006 ; Chang 2017 ), although the old genre remained standard fare in nightclubs and for partying ( Son 2006 ). Commercial radio stations launched in the 1960s (MBC in 1961, DBS in 1963, and TBS in 1964), and these encouraged domestic production. Ballads, replete with long intros and central instrumental interludes that facilitated announcer voice-overs, soon filled the airwaves. These showcased solo singers more than groups—because each broadcasting company employed its own in-house backing band, dance group, and arrangers. Local rock, often referred to as “group sound,” is often reported to have begun in 1964 with Shin Joong Hyun’s band, Add4 (see, e.g., Pil Ho Kim 2017 , 71; Dohee Kwon 2017 , 126), although others soon joined, such as Kim Hongt’ak’s Key Boys. 7 By the early 1970s, the authoritarian regime under general-turned-president Park Chung Hee had turned against such decadent music, restricting its broadcasts and moving it largely underground. Shin’s music was officially banned in 1975, shortly before Shin was arrested, ostensibly for smoking marijuana. 8 Ballads proved simpler to monitor and approve, and popular song contests organized by broadcasters in the 1970s and 1980s continued to introduce a steady stream of singers to the nation, among them the celebrated and enduring Cho Yong Pil and Lee Sun Hee. At the same time, the mid-1960s had seen the emergence of an underground “folk song” movement using acoustic guitars ( t’ong kit’a ), influenced by American protest songs and which, as part of a student song movement, was associated with demonstrations that demanded democracy ( Shin et al. 1998b , 18–51; Hwang 2006 , 37–39). 9

Learning from the Global: Assimilations and Appropriations

Popular music’s public conformism outlasted Park, who was assassinated in 1979. It basically continued until March 1992, when Seo Taiji burst onto Korean screens, introducing rap (Howard 2006a , b , 87–90; Maliangkay 2014 ). Four tracks from Seo’s first album entered the charts in rapid succession: ‘ Nan arayo ’ (I Know), ‘ Ijaenŭn ’ (Now), ‘ Hwansangsok ŭi kŭdae ’ (You in Your Dreams), and ‘ Ibami kip’ŏgajiman ’ (This Night, Is Deep, But). Intriguingly, Seo was not the first Korean to record rap. Studios had mixed rap tracks prior to 1992, but strict licensing requirements prevented any label releasing such supposedly degenerate music. Korea, however, after thirty years of military rule, had begun to embrace democracy, and in December1992 it was to elect its first non-military president, Kim Young Sam. State control was loosening. Korean Americans, knowledgeable about American pop genres, were returning to the homeland, keen to make a mark. A “new generation” ( shinsedae ) was maturing who had grown up without experience of colonialism, war, and poverty. Seo’s band, Seo Taiji and Boys, offered a new image of idols operating outside state or broadcaster control. It used conventional sampling techniques and synthesized accompaniments, but appropriated American genres. Soon, Seo turned to heavy metal and the Beastie Boys in a critique of school cramming, ‘ Kyoshil idea ’ (Classroom Ideology, 1994), and to gangsta rap in a commentary on drop-outs, ‘Come Back Home’ (1995; see Jung 2006 ). When Seo’s band disbanded, in January 1996, a survey for the journal Chugan Chosŏn ( Weekly Korea ) reported it was the favorite of five times as many Koreans as any other band. 10 Seo remained the top Korean icon in 1996’s end-of-year surveys. He blew experimentation open. Rock, R&B, and heavy metal had not been totally unknown, but, banned from the media, they were largely confined to underground clubs frequented by students in Seoul’s Shinch’on district (bordered by four universities: Yonsei, Ewha, Sogang, Hongik). Increasing affluence allowed new start-up labels to proliferate, pushing assimilations of American R&B and disco alongside ballads (Howard 2006a , b , 90–92; Fuhr 2016 , 52–55). After rap, reggae arrived with Kim Gun Mo’s ‘ P’inggye ’ (Excuse, 1993), a mix of rap and reggae came with Roo’ra’s Roots of Reggae (1994), and jungle was intimated in Pak Migyŏng’s ‘ Ibŭŭi kyŏnggo ’ (Eve’s Warning, 1995). Kim Gun Mo turned more explicitly to hip-hop; 11 punk took over Shinch’on’s clubs ( Epstein 2000 ). 12

After years of strict control by state bodies, lyrics remained non-controversial. Seo’s rap-based ‘I Know,’ for example, talked about leaving a lover, and realizing that a break-up in the relationship was inevitable. The singer regrets that he had never told her he loved her, and remembers her smile—all that he has left of her. ‘Excuse,’ similarly, matches reggae to sentiments about breaking up. The protagonist finds a letter with a single word, “Goodbye,” hidden inside a bouquet of flowers. His lover has left, without saying anything more, as if she wants to teach him about how love leads to sadness but does not want to consider his feelings.

While the explosion of popular culture can be considered to mirror the neoliberal commercialization of cultural production under Reagan and the first President Bush in the United States, 13 the buzz word in South Korea during the 1990s was “ segyehwa ”—globalization—suggesting that other factors were at play. South Korea was fast emerging as a major world economy, and its people wanted to be global citizens. Hence, the Seoul Olympics in 1988 had been run with the slogan “Seoul to the world, the world to Seoul.” Segyehwa in respect to Korean popular culture was facilitated by the expansion of satellite and cable broadcasting across Asia. Star TV was set up by Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka Shing in 1990, and MTV entered the Asian market in 1991. Star would later set up Channel V as a music-driven rival to MTV that targeted regional markets, including Korea, promoting local groups rather than Euro-American pop. Meanwhile, in Korea, Mnet started its cable operations in 1993. Every Korean home suddenly had unprecedented access to global trends.

With satellite and cable broadcasting, image, showcased by an Appadurian mediascape (after Appadurai 1996 ), became central. The focus shifted from aural to visual. ‘Excuse’ was marketed with one of the first-ever Korean music videos: filmed in Jamaica, it brought to prominence a dance duo, CLON (“there is no ‘e’ in ‘cloning,’” they explained to me in 1999), who had established themselves through Michael Jackson dance covers. Many music videos mirrored the then-popular OST albums of TV drama and film music, casting actors in scripted mini-dramas. Videos exploited the growing tolerance for graphic depictions of violence and sex, yet typically retained conservative lyrics. The 1998 video for H.O.T’s ( H igh Five o f T eenagers) ‘ Pit ’ (Hope) from their third album, for example, matched lyrics about love to scenes of road rage and the crushing to death of a teenage biker. Again, ‘Mother,’ the January 1999 debut of g.o.d ( G roove O ver d ose) coupled scenes of aggression and bullying among high school kids to lyrics that described growing up under the wings of a struggling single parent. 14 Imaging also encouraged dance to be highlighted, not least to serve live TV shows. Pop music had become the showcase for Korean Cool—the complex that soon become known as the Korean Wave ( Hallyu ) comprising music, drama and film, fashion, make-up, cuisine, and cosmetic surgery.

Won Rae, half of CLON, was somewhat musically challenged, so when the duo won a competition in 1996 that came with a contract to record three albums, they needed to supplement their dancing. The solution was to work with accomplished singers, hence, an established rock star, Kim Tae Young, joined for their 1999 album, Funky Together . CLON was one of the first groups to find success beyond Korea when their 1997 album was released in Taiwan through Rock Records ( Sung 2006 , 170–172). H.O.T., meanwhile, toured China—the term “Korean Wave” translates, via the Korean term Hallyu , the Chinese term hanliu , which was coined for these foreign forays. Note that until the turn of the millennium, Korean pop, with the exception of yuhaengga , was simply termed Han’guk kayo (Korean songs) or in’gi kayo (popular songs)—differentiating Korean productions from imported Euro-American p’apsong (pop songs) ( Shin 2013 , 29–39). As a term, then, K-pop emerged to mark the commodification of music within the Korean Wave. Its commodification, though, invites critiques akin to those of Adorno and the mid-twentieth-century Frankfurt School of popular culture, or critiques familiar from scholarship on neoliberalism. Hence, in summer 1999, when I interviewed Won Young Min, editor of the then-popular Korean magazine Global Music Video , he complained:

The main interest is in dance. There is no variety, and except for the drum machines that everybody uses, the techno of Europe is missing. Songs are mostly about love, and the lyricists don’t seem to care about topical issues (cited from Howard 2006a , b , 95).

The Local Solution: The Rise of Entertainment Companies

Commodification, in a neoliberal sense, was enabled through the rise of entertainment companies. SM Entertainment was the first to be set up, established by Lee Soo Man (a Seoul National University graduate, former participant in the underground song movement, and a radio and television host). 15 H.O.T. was SM’s first signing. Launched in September 1996, H.O.T. reputedly sold over ten million copies of its ten albums (five studio, four live, and one soundtrack album) before it disbanded in May 2001. To set up H.O.T., Lee first surveyed teenage girls, then advertised for dancers who fitted what girls told him they wanted. Applicants attended public auditions in both Seoul and Los Angeles in 2004, where looks as well as singing and dancing skills—and the decibels created by screaming audiences of teenage girls—were assessed. The five idols selected were then given systematic training before launching their debut album, We Hate All Kinds of Violence .

Where stars and bands had previously been found—auditioned or scouted in song competitions and festivals, either individually or as pre-existing groups—entertainment companies held competitions to identify recruits and then intensively trained, packaged, and launched idols and idol groups onto the market. The arrival of SM and it two major rivals, YG Entertainment and JYP Entertainment, 16 proved timely. H.O.T. debuted as mp3 players arrived and Koreans began to adapt to the digital era. Korea was by 1997 the thirteenth largest market for recorded music in the world, with domestic sales exceeding 54 million CDs and 155 million cassettes—and, for historical cost-per-unit reasons, these were sales of albums rather than singles. 17 But in 2000, although the Korean market was by then second largest in Asia, behind Japan, it only turned over an annual US$300 million. More than 20 percent of its value was lost year-on-year in each of the next four years. Entertainment companies had to leverage new revenue streams, and had to do so fast. They worked on product placement and sponsorship. They placed idols in film, TV drama, and comedy show cameos. They created ever-more flashy stage shows. They monetized fandom through merchandising. Over time, album sales became less important as they substituted business-to-business (B2B) for business-to-consumer (B2C) models ( Oh and Pak 2012 ). They built fan support through fanclubs, fanzines, and “fan passports,” and in recent years they have set up shrines to K-pop—as tourist destinations, complete with hologram idols, who passively greet fans ( Jung 2011 , 95–98; Kim 2018 , 125–126, 132–142).

The Asian financial crisis hit Korea in autumn 1997. 18 This reduced the attraction of Korea to international music conglomerates, leaving domestic entertainment companies to develop local strategies to weather the storm. Although the companies may “appear as small venture companies in the face of the global music industry” (Cha Ujin, interviewed in Kim 2018 , 34), they proved remarkably adept at manipulating the emerging Korean Wave. By 2013, the market capitalization of SM Entertainment had reached KRW780 billion (approx. US$697 million), YG KRW515 billion (US$460 million), and JYP KRW120 billion (US$107 million) ( Economist , October 26, 2013). 19 By September 2017, SM boasted 11.6 million YouTube channel subscribers, YG 3 million, and JYP 4.9 million. Individual idols and bands had more: BigBang, in the YG stable, had 7.9 million subscribers, while SM’s Super Junior had 5.8 million; on China’s Weibo, they had 9.2 million and 16 million followers, respectively ( Kim 2018 , 34–35). Such numbers, of course, pale in comparison with BTS, who at the time of writing (July 2020) boast 28.8 million YouTube subscribers. Today, many entertainment companies are active, including SM, YG, and JYP, but also Big Hit, Cube, FAVE, FNC, Star Empire, and Stone. 20

The financial crisis shredded the jobs-for-life culture that had long been associated with Korea’s manufacturing conglomerates and service industries. Those coming to the job market during and after the crisis are collectively known as the “880,000 wŏn ” generation—able to earn only US$800 a month, too little to support a family. Korea has few natural resources and a high population density, so must rely on its human resources. As a result, life in modern Korea centers around what a person can achieve. 21 So, as the job market contracted, young people competed to distinguish themselves, and in attempting to do so, K-pop’s idol culture proved attractive. To a generation pessimistic about ever earning a reasonable income, its high risk of failure was outweighed by the possibility of massive success ( Kang 2015 , 51–65). Hence the oft-cited remark attributed to BTS’s lead rapper, RM, who although he performed well at school decided to forego academic study, where he might become only the “5,000th-best mathematician in the country,” to be the “No. 1 rapper.”

Entertainment companies require those they recruit to sign contracts. These function as the political economy of Korea’s culture industry, generating value only when consumers and sponsors pay to see and hear a fully trained idol or idol group. Thus, contracts are designed to enable companies to recoup the costs of an extended training period before idols debut. 22 They must cover the costs of launching a debut album, subsequent ongoing costs, and, for a successful idol or group, every “comeback” album (that is, a second or later album). H.O.T. broke apart in 2001 because two members decided they were not paid enough and left— Time reported they were earning just US$10,000 for every million albums sold. 23 A number of court cases have determined that contracts are restrictive and do not comply with Korean (or international human rights) legislation. Reports link the suicides of a number of idols to the pressure cooker of training and life as an idol when bound to contracts. But, wannabe stars are apt to sign without understanding the terms: contracts typically ban trainees from drinking, smoking, using mobile phones, or having relationships; most require trainees to live together in a dormitory, and many include a condition giving the company the right to require trainees to undergo cosmetic surgery.

The company decides on the image of an idol or group. Trainees take on character roles and audition, almost as if they are actors, as the decision-making process plays out. The company matches trainees together, inserting or removing individuals from a prospective group. It is common for groups to have more members than appear at the debut, and the line-up may change during the public life of a group. The vast majority of trainees never make it to a debut. The company pressurizes trainees to conform; uniformity is required in dancing and singing, and group members will often be chosen who are of uniform height or body shape. Requiring cosmetic surgery to mold “golden ratio” faces is common; although initially associated with girl idols, boy idols are increasingly required to go under the scalpel. 24 Because the company decides on the market to target, special training in elocution and decorum or foreign languages may be required. Typically, an idol group will be assigned a leader, who relays instructions to the group and enforces compliance. The leader will often become the group’s spokesperson. Matching normative Korean social hierarchy, a group collectively looks up to its oldest member ( hyŏng ) and takes care of its youngest member ( mangnae ). In vlogs, music videos, and media appearances, roles can, however, border on caricature, so when the male idol group g.o.d. starred in a reality show for MBC TV in 2001, each took on a specific role, one as mother and one as father to a third, as a baby boy.

Training, launching, and oiling the promotion machine to keep a band going is, essentially, akin to industrial mass production. It builds in reproducibility and replaceability, involving the atomization of consumers as well as idols ( Strinati 2004 , 11) through the “McDonaldization” of labor ( Ritzer 2013 ). The process is set out and itemized in a manual distributed to SM Entertainment employees, detailing producer, composer, and choreographer roles, precise colors of make-up for each market segment, what chord progressions to use where, appropriate hand gestures and postures/positions, as well as camera angles for photoshoots, and details of when to use camera pans and montages in music videos ( Kang 2015 , 62).

Reaching Outward across the Globe

H.O.T, CLON, and g.o.d. were part of the first phase in Korean Wave’s internationalization—Korean Wave 1—reaching Japan, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, then Southeast Asia, and further afield alongside films such as Shiri (1999), Yŏpkijŏgin kŭnyŏ (My Sassy Girl, 2001), and Chobok manura (My Wife Is a Gangster, 2001), and TV dramas, including Kyŏul yŏn’ga (Winter Sonata, 2002), and the historical Taejanggŭm (Jewel in the Palace, 2003–2004). Winter Sonata first stormed Japan, where it was broadcast by NHK, and was then exported to much of the world, while Jewel in the Palace was broadcast from Australia to Zimbabwe. The financial crisis aided Korean Wave’s internationalization, since, as the Korean currency devalued, Korea’s soft culture became cheap compared to American or Japanese equivalents. The formula for dramas and films mixed the familiar with an appeal to East Asian values—moral and ethical codes inherited from Confucianism, without the excesses of Hollywood—and an idealized vision of what modern life should be. It packaged realism and irony. Success came because many Koreans had high levels of training and expertise, on one side the result of the export orientation pursued by the authoritarian regime prior to the 1990s, and on the other the legacy of student campaigns for democracy ( Howard 2013 ). Translated to K-pop, the formula called for a “de-Koreanized” ( Shin 2009 , 513–515) and culturally odorless “paradigm of transcultural hybridity” ( Jung 2011 , 3). 25 It mixed slick dance routines, rap with lyrical ballads, hooks, and sonic cues (including English riffs: consider Girls’ Generation’s 26 ‘Gee’ or Psy’s ‘Gangnam Style’), all delivered with the perfection expected of idol groups. 27

K-pop circulated during Korean Wave 1 in physical formats, but also through satellite and cable TV. Consumers were “sound trackers,” who practiced fandom by purchasing albums and idol-related merchandise. To counter the digital challenge, physical albums were packaged with glossy booklets, photocards, T-shirts, and more; some were cased or issued with multiple covers to encourage fans to buy additional copies. A second phase, Korean Wave 2, began after the launch of YouTube in 2005, as entertainment companies shifted their attention more explicitly to global markets. The three major companies switched to English on their social media platforms, and they targeted idols to specific markets. SM had already promoted BoA in Japan, her breakthrough there coming with the 2002 studio album Listen to My Heart , which had debuted at No. 1 on the Oricon Chart, and included songs by Japanese as well as Korean lyricists and composers. Again, one of the five members of H.O.T. had auditioned in America, and Korean Americans (along with Korean Canadians) were common in idol groups. Korean Wave 2 also recruited from the markets to be targeted, particularly from China and Taiwan (e.g., members of Super Junior (2005–), Victoria and Amber in f(x) (2009–), Fei and Jia in MissA (2010–2017), and Lay, Kris, Luhan, and Tao in Exo (2012–)); Japan (e.g., Momo, Sana, and Mina in Twice (2015–)); and Thailand (e.g., Nichkhun in 2PM (2008–2016) and Lisa in Blackpink (2016–)). 28

By utilizing social networks to allow individualized, private mimicry ( Jung and Hirata 2012 ), Korean Wave 2 expanded communities of active fans as companies encouraged participation. Fans became “dance trackers”: perfect synchronicity of idol dance in music videos remained a given, but choreography was made replicable so fans could create cover dances (Käng 2012 , 2014 ). 29 To facilitate this, the situated locations of videos common in Korean Wave 1 were replaced by blank stages (framed as dressing rooms, rehearsal spaces, empty streets, and so on) that gave little sense of anything immutably Korean. Official videos filled these stages with perfectly manicured and pedicured idol groups, but websites for fans supplemented these with mirror videos giving single-camera views of a performance. 30 Using these, fans practiced the moves, becoming, to use Henry Jenkins’ (2006) term, “prosumers.” Liew Kai Khiun explores the shift from “sound trackers” to “dance trackers,” listing a set of paired attributes (Korean Wave 1/Korean Wave 2): adult/adolescent, text/body, TV/YouTube, cognitive/physical, narrative/choreographed, soundtrack/dance track, resolution/synchronization, moment/movement, tears/sweat, experience/performance ( Khiun 2013 , 168).

Fandom continues to be leveraged. Fans support their idols by buying goods and products that offer rewards, gaining access to special events. They are encouraged to buy multiple copies of an album to push it up the charts, and to pay fees when their idols appear on TV shows by phoning in with multiple votes ( Kim 2018 , 8). They mediatize their participation at events by uploading clips they have captured on their smartphones to social media (2018, 11). Suk-Young Kim explores the 2013 production of the video for G-Dragon’s ‘ Niga muŏnde ’ (Who You): a thousand fans, who had bought the right merchandise, were invited to a warehouse where they surrounded a Perspex box. Inside sat a white Lamborghini and, of course, G-Dragon. As he performed the song, approaching and motioning to his swooning fans, the fans filmed him on their smartphones, jostling for the best view. At the end of the song, he drove the Lamborghini away, leaving the screaming fans. The fans distributed their clips online, but they were also filmed as part of the official music video, creating a “pixel textuality” in which they bought the commodity as they became commodified as props within it ( Kim 2018 , 123–130). 31

Fandom is attractive to researchers because it is observable, measuring “a particular type of media end-user,” who “extends their engagement beyond mere consumption, seeking out community” ( Keith 2019 , 134, after Jenkins 1992 ). It has become popular to measure K-pop’s success through its fandom, and this is precisely what the Korea Foundation report cited at the beginning of this essay measures. Indeed, fandom is the focus of a recent volume on Korean Wave ( Park, Otmazgin, and Howard 2019 ). But Korea’s entertainment companies have long targeted much larger groups of what Keith terms “passive fans” (2019, 147). Passive fans are identified in an emerging, softer take on fandom (for which see Duffett 2013 ): they service both the B2B model (justifying commercial sponsorship) and government investment and promotion (using K-pop to brand Korea). Fans may consume K-pop privately, particularly where this avoids negative stereotyping ( Williams 2016 ), but passive fans may also be socially engaged, because among friends they share their K-pop interest. But, with their interest piqued by K-pop, they go on to buy other Korean products—cars, smartphones, TVs, and washing machines. Among today’s global youth, passive fans of K-pop number many times more than the easily observable “prosumers.” 32

Local Turns Global: Gender, Cuteness, and Sexualization

Broadly speaking, Korean Wave 1 inherited gender norms from East Asia’s past, in which a woman was the “girl next door,” cute ( aegyo ), but sexually veiled. In the 1980s and 1990s, the singer Lee Sun Hee epitomized this image. She wore her hair short and wore spectacles portraying the image of a dedicated student—as if she had just come out of a university library. Cuteness was explored by girl groups, such as FinK.L, launched in 1998, who in videos danced gently, always dressed in virginal white or pastel long, flowing costumes. As Korean Wave 2 arrived, cuteness was replaced by bubble-gum dollification. This was displayed in the 2007 debuts of Wonder Girls and Girls’ Generation ( Jung 2013 , Epstein and Turnbull 2014 ). To attract the male gaze, however, overt sexualization soon became normalized ( Kim 2011 ). Consider, in this regard, Cube Entertainment’s 4Minute, who launched in 2009, and the solo idol G.Na, promoted as 168cm tall, 48kg in weight, and with natural D-cup breasts—who complained she could not buy bras in Korea. 33 G.Na had been expected to debut in 2007 with the group Five Girls, but her entertainment company ran into financial trouble, so her eventual EP debut, Draw G’s First Breath , was not released until 2010.

To some, girl idol videos verge on the pornographic ( Kim 2019 , 74 and 83), but sexual objectification functions within the internationalization aspect of Korean Wave 2, responding to the Western stereotype of Asia, in which Asian female sexuality is celebrated while the Asian male is perceived as weak and non-threatening. 34 Spoon-fed to American consumers by the media ( Wu 2002 ; Prasso 2005 ), this was long ago the portrayal of Gustave Flaubert and Richard Burton, and of Paul Gauguin’s canvasses; “the Orient” was, because of its imagined female sexualization, associated with “the freedom of licentious sex” ( Said 1978 , 190). Brown Eyed Girls, who debuted in 2006 with the R&B ‘ Tagawasŏ ’ (Come Closer), went some way to juxtapose the overtly sexual with women’s equality, although the pretense of the latter was lost by the time of ‘Abracadabra’ (2009) and in Ga-In’s reprise of her contribution to this as a foil to male entitlement in Psy’s ‘Gentleman’ (2013). Her controversial “F**K U” (2014) claimed to display a strong woman, but Ga-In’s slinky negligee and close-up pouting suggested otherwise; the contradictions remain in 2015’s ‘Paradise Lost,’ despite the claim to combine art, sensuality, and sexiness.

Companies, though, actively targeted market segments, and, notwithstanding the lesbian intimations at the end of ‘Abacadabra,’ a metrosexual, LGBTQi-friendly image arrived with the American Taiwanese Amber Liu ( Laforgia and Howard 2017 ). She debuted with the girl idol group f(x) in 2009, her androgyny emphasized by loose tank tops and cargo pants contrasting the body-accentuating short, tight skirts, and heels of her fellow group members. In ‘ Chŏt sarangni ’ (Rum Pum Pum Pum, 2013), she wore tartan basketball shorts and tops, while her four fellow idols were in shirts over miniscule shorts. Again, at the opening of ‘4 Walls’ (2015), her t-shirt contrasts another member in a negligee, and as the song gets underway, her shirt and pants contrast Krystal and Luna in tight tops revealing their belly buttons and Victoria in a short shift dress. Amber kept fans guessing: was she lesbian, bisexual, or just a tomboy? Or, since she was under contract, was she merely acting out a role created for her by her company? 35

The rules for men were different; how could they be otherwise in the wake of Hong Kong’s martial arts films? Within Korean Wave 1, CLON and the 1997-debuting Korean American Yoo Seungjun portrayed strong masculinity, at gigs stripping off tops to allow teenage fans to ogle their muscles and tattoos (strict control meant they had to remain fully dressed for media appearances). In contrast, ballad-inheriting male idols championed a softer masculinity, which was shared with the stars of films and dramas, most famously Bae Yong Joon (Yonsama to his Japanese fans) in Winter Sonata ; this recalled the Confucian scholar-gentleman ( sonbi ) of previous centuries. The two sides fused in the pan-Asian Rain’s (Jung Ji-hoon’s) “man’s body with a boy’s face,” or “angelic face and a killer body” ( Kim 2013 , 20, citing Shin 2009 ; see also Jung 2011 , 73–118). Rain’s music videos, however, abandoned subtlety—consider, with no pun intended, ‘I’m Coming,’ ‘Rainism,’ and ‘It’s Raining.’ 36 Rain was one of the first idols to look to America, when he performed at Madison Square Gardens, and “world tours” confirmed his large Southeast Asian fan following. His pan-Asian identity led to acting, first in the Korean TV drama Full House (2004), and then in the Hollywood films Speed Racer (2008) and Ninja Assassin (2009). Korean Wave 2 brought a newer metrosexual male, which, on one side, softened masculinity—through cosmetic surgery—with groups such as Cube’s Beast (in 2017 repackaged as Highlight), who debuted in 2009 with the mini-album Beast Is the B2ST . 37 On the other side, strong masculinity left Asian males entwining with white, provocative Euro-American muses in Gary’s (Lee Ssang’s) ‘ Chogŭm itta sawŏhae ’ (Shower Later, 2013) and in the venerable Yoon Do-hyun band update of ‘Cigarette Girl’ (2014). Again, were boy idols merely acting out roles created by their companies as they targeted market segments?

Gone Global: ‘Gangnam Style’

An excerpt of the official video for ‘Gangnam Style’ was uploaded to YouTube on July 11, 2012. The full video was released four days later. ‘Gangnam Style’ was the opening track on Psy’s (Park Jae-sang’s) sixth album. It was his eighteenth single. It resurrected the outdated Western stereotypes of Asian gender identity, and the video backdrops suggested Korean Wave 1 territory. But it quickly came to signify Korean Wave 2’s “dance trackers,” as flash mobs of up to twenty thousand people broke out in Pasadena, New York’s Times Square, and Sydney, Australia. Flash mobs soon multiplied to, among other places, Seoul, Sulawesi, Milan, Paris, and Rome.

Not everybody was enthusiastic. “Can anyone kill Gangnam Style?,” asked The Guardian online blog on November 14, 2012. “It is the cringe-proof meme, the zombie meme, the meme that knows no shame. Quite possibly, it will be danced by grannies at weddings in 2030—the twenty-first-century equivalent of the conga line; the new Macarena.” 38 Why, Time magazine asked on October 1, 2012, had the song not died after Google’s fifty-seven-year-old Eric Schmidt danced to it? Many others re-hashed the “horse riding” dance, but nobody could damp enthusiasm. Some even suffered as a consequence, and Time returned to ‘Gangnam Style’ on April 3, 2014, reporting how a policeman in Falmouth, Cornwall, had been sacked for dancing to the song in an effort to raise money for a dying child. Back in 2012, as summer moved to autumn, comments on The Guardian ’s blog suggested deepening despair, as ‘Gangnam Style’ became evermore impossible to escape: “Shut up, South Korea!,” “I hate the song!,” ‘Gangnam Style’ challenged many K-pop fans, who resisted its simple dance moves that subsumed aesthetics beneath banal imaging. They were unhappy that it reverted back to stereotyping, featuring a “podgy comic singer and long-legged beauties,” (as Korea Times put it on December 5, 2012) and that it made fun of the daily grind that was life in Korea, generating a “sudden attractiveness or sarcastic humor of an actor’s culture” ( Nye and Kim 2013 , 33).

It generated parodies. One of the first was contributed by the duo behind the EatYourKimchi YouTube channel, Simon and Martina Stawski. Keeping some of the imaging behind a new soundtrack, their parody was uploaded to YouTube on July 23, 2012. 39 Barely six weeks later, on September 3, the duo announced on Al-Jazeera TV that ‘Gangnam Style’ should not be considered K-pop, and that, while Psy deserved popularity abroad, ‘Gangnam Style’ was in no way representative of Korean Wave. 40 But even in Korea, ‘Gangnam Style’ proved immensely popular, holding the top spot on many domestic charts from its launch in July 2012 until Psy stopped official promotion in February 2013. Abroad, the fuse for its success was lit by celebrities. Former Take That member Robbie Williams mentioned it on his blog on July 28, 2012, and the next day it was tweeted by rapper T-Pain. On July 30, Scooter Braun picked up and tagged the video, tweeting, rhetorically: “HOW DID I NOT SIGN THIS GUY!?!??!” Soon, his Raymond Braun Media Group concluded a contract with Psy, placing the Korean alongside others he managed, such as Justin Bieber and M.C. Hammer. On August 1, the Daily Beast tagged ‘Gangnam Style,’ as its video passed ten million YouTube views. A month later, and after singer Katy Perry had shared the video with her followers, it had notched up one hundred million views. By the end of September, it was at the second spot on the Billboard charts after an estimated thirty-four million Americans had listened to it. At the time, Bieber’s “Baby” held the record for the most YouTube views, but ‘Gangnam Style’ breezed past it. Views surpassed a billion, then two billion, then three billion—YouTube, reportedly, had to recalibrate its systems multiple times. Psy performed on the Ellen DeGeneres Show . He taught Britney Spears the dance moves. He was a guest alongside Taylor Swift on ABC’s New Year’s Eve Show . The Tonight Show with Jay Leno presented a number of parodies at the expense of America’s politicians. ‘Gangnam Style’ featured on ABC’s Dancing with the Stars , and infamously but somewhat later on BBC TV’s Strictly Come Dancing , when a judge remarked about the former Labour politician Ed Balls’s interpretation: “I don’t think there’s any words in the dictionary to describe that.”

‘Gangnam Style’ quickly become an icon of popular culture. In October 2012, South Park ’s Halloween party, “A Nightmare on FaceTime,” replaced Frankenstein with GangnamStein. In 2013, it featured in films such as This Is the End , and the documentary Linsanity , and a character from the song’s video danced in My Little Pony: Equestria Girls . In 2014, a cartoon version of Psy appeared in the credits for (and in adverts for) The Nut Job . 41 The song was eminently mashable—in previous decades, one might have expected covers or remixes, but ‘Gangnam Style’ was “born to spawn” (as Arwa Mahdawi put it in The Guardian on September 24, 2012). On YouTube, it generated several hundred thousand parodies, which typically took the song and made it something else by and for American farmers, Eton schoolboys, firemen, civil servants, computer nerds, politician avatars, Siberian Yeti imitators. Anybody who wanted to, including plenty of classes of Korean Studies’ students, got involved. In the age of social media, parodies of ‘Gangnam Style’ functioned as alternatives to Twitter’s 280-characters, or selfies, and were made and uploaded to YouTube “country-by-country, occupation-by-occupation and school-by-school” ( Ono and Kwon 2013 , 209). Psy (and Braun) allowed those who made parodies to project themselves online, taking click fees but not invoking intellectual property rights. ‘Gangnam Style’ became, to quote Tim Byron in The Vine , 42 “a piece of shared currency which can be taken as a known in a world which is increasingly nicheified.” As Psy lamented on BBC1 Radio on October 5, 2012, “The problem is that my music video is more popular than I am.”

An exception to the self-culture parody was ‘London Style,’ co-produced by Kim Mose and Cho Hanbit with Korean, Japanese, and British students, and uploaded to YouTube on September 16, 2012. This mirrored Psy’s imaging and lip-synched his lyrics, but portrayed daily life in London rather than modern life in Seoul, from coffee shops to the subway, and from Big Ben to Harry Potter’s Platform 9¾ at Kings Cross Station. A follow-up video, in which Cho starred as an improvising pianist, ‘Gangnam Style Piano Tribute,’ started with the free-to-use piano at St. Pancras Station, and took respect for the original song even further. 43

‘Gangnam Style,’ though, is itself a parody. It lambasts modern life in Seoul, particularly the affluent apartment district of Gangnam, but is partly filmed in down-at-heels locations outside Seoul. Its protagonist is a failure. He sunbathes in a tiny park as children go to school around him. He frantically cycles a pedalo beside an artificial beach on the polluted river. He gets cast aside by the wealthy owner of a red Mercedes sports car, in a basement car park full of grey and black Hyundais. And he forlornly hopes he might get lucky with the beautiful girls (particularly Hyuna, who pole dances on the subway). The song’s memes simply cast these images aside as they couple the relatively simple dance moves to framed images of, well, farming, firefighting, school, and so on. Devoid of the original song’s own parody, the memes enabled it to return to Korea de-Koreanized and culturally odorless. In this paradigmatic form, it took center stage in the February 2013 inauguration of the incoming president of South Korea, Park Geun-hye, the daughter of the general-turned-president Park Chung Hee. She was indelibly linked to her father’s autocratic regime, hence the song’s most prominent lyric, “Hey, sexy lady!” (delivered, of course, in English) was the diametrical opposite of Park’s image. So was the first verse, where Psy describes a classy girl enjoying coffee during the day whose heart becomes hot in the evenings.

Ironically, when in December 2016 public demonstrations broke out in Seoul, night after night, as citizens challenged Park’s supposed corruption, leading, eventually, to her impeachment, citizens took to the streets to the sound K-pop. As their anthem they choose g.o.d’s ‘One Candle,’ from 2000, originally released during Korean Wave 1. This describes how a single candle throws out only a little light, but the light grows when a second candle is lit. More and more candles are lit, dispelling the darkness, and showing up the reality of what is going on.

Creating Local and Global Idols: Marking Success and Failure

Shin Joohak, CEO of the entertainment company Star Empire, remarked in a documentary produced by the journalist Hark Joon Lee, 9 Muses of Star Empire , that he had invested more than $1 million prior to launching his idol group. 44 The idea had been to choose nine models and train them as idols. Contracting great singers or great dancers was never his priority. Rather, the nine members were selected for their looks, and how closely their faces matched the “golden ratio.” Each member was of roughly equal height and body shape. But such criteria challenged standard formulas. The documentary and a book ( Lee and Jin 2019 , chapters 4–8) chart the training of Nine Muses, beginning in 2010, how choreography and music is produced, costumes chosen, make-up selected, photoshoots for the debut designed and controlled, and so on. For the pre-launch publicity campaign, the girls are seen working alongside farmers in fields, as well as parading before army conscripts. Not all goes well, though, and after the tearful leader, Jaekyung, is scolded for not strictly overseeing the group’s training, she leaves the dormitory to re-join the world, chased by Lee Hyojun, the male manager. Soon after the debut of Nine Muses, in early 2011 the nine became six as Bini, Rana, and Euaerin were “temporarily” dismissed. A couple of months later, Euaerin re-joined as the single ‘Figaro’ was released. Star Empire announced a name change to Sweet Candy—the original name was deemed no longer appropriate—but quickly backtracked, announcing its intention to add two more members. Nine Muses achieved moderate success, particularly when the song ‘Lost (’til the Night Is Over)’ pushed toward the top spot on the domestic charts in 2015, and with a solo gig ( Muse in the City ) in 2016 and several albums. But, only three of the original nine remained by 2015, supplemented by others, including Hyuna. Their final line-up of just four members, from the beginning of 2017, kept only one of the original nine. In February 2019, those four released their final single, ‘Remember,’ met with fans, and announced they were disbanding. 45

A contrasting idol group was set up by Bang Si-hyuk and his company Big Hit. Bang had previously worked at JYP, and his credits included working on g.o.d. He had already launched 8Eight in 2007 and 2AM in 2008, but by 2010 he wanted to run a rap group. He recruited Kim Namjoon, a.k.a. RM (Rap Monster). This was the beginnings of BTS. 46 Kim Namjoon was to be the rap group’s leader, relaying instructions to other members, and being tasked with keeping morale up. His English skills and general confidence meant he was also destined to become the band’s spokesperson. Big Hit began trialing additional rappers, but by the end of 2011 Bang changed direction. Recognizing that rap bands were losing their appeal with fans, he added a dancer, Jung Hoseok (J-Hope). Big Hit had several dozen trainee idols, and from these, after experimenting by adding and removing members, it chose Jeon Jungkook (Golden mangnae ), Kim Taehyung (V), Kim Seokjin (Jin), Park Jimin (Jams), and Min Yoongi (Suga). By summer 2012, the group, BTS—an abbreviation of the Korean name, Bangtan Sonyeondan (Bulletproof Boy Scouts)—was taking shape. Training continued. By the time the debut album was launched on June 13, 2013, each member had an identity linked to their role in the group. RM was leader, but the hyŏng (older brother) was Jin, two years older and good-looking, whose face fans consider has the “golden ratio,” and who fans celebrate through the viral hashtag #ThirdOneFromTheLeft. J-Hope led the dance, supported by Jams, who had street dance and modern dance credentials. Suga, nicknamed perhaps after baseball—as the shooting guard (dropping final consonants in the Japanese way)—or because of his sweet nature (that is, “sugar”), supported RM in the rap line. He added hip hop and techno skills. Golden mangnae (younger brother) was cute and playful, and since he was two years’ junior to any other group member, everybody was expected to care for him. V rounded out both the rap and dance lines.

Compared to the big three entertainment companies, Big Hit had limited resources. Therefore, they needed to carefully plan the group’s promotion. They set up a YouTube channel in December 2012, and began to promote BTS on social media. They uploaded a BTS cover of a Kanye West track, coupling this to cameos of key members, then in January 2013 added ‘ Hakkyo ŭi nunmul ’ (School of Tears), based on Kendrick Lamar’s ‘Swimming Pools (Drank).’ They began to post vlog diaries, in which each idol discussed their training hardships and debut preparations. To attract fans, the vlogs added a human dimension, underlining the roles each had been assigned, but also their hobbies, featuring their bedrooms as backdrops. A fan café launched. On May 21, 2013, a countdown clock went live online, together with a 45-second trailer. June 13 was the debut, when the group appeared on both M Countdown (aired on Mnet) and Music Bank (on the state-owned broadcaster, KBS). 47 On both, they performed two songs from their first album, ‘No More Dream’ and ‘We Are Bulletproof.’ The album, 2 COOL 4 SKOOL , launched six days later.

This, though, was only the start of a punishing schedule. The countdown clock reappeared on August 27, barely two months later. It signaled the comeback album. A trailer was posted on YouTube, featuring RM rapping in English that it was time for the youth to live their own life. The trailer showcased merchandise in the form of BTS-branded trainers. It, and the concept trailer that soon followed, indicated how the group’s high school image was evolving: the band now wore uniforms of black, short-sleeved shirts, shorts, and long socks. When they released a full song on September 10, ‘N.O.’ (a.k.a. ‘No Offence’), they switched to white uniforms, adding jewelry and sporting new hairstyles. The comeback album, O!RUL8,2? , launched the next day. They hosted fan meetings. They became TV regulars. January 2014 saw the countdown clock reappear. When BTS gave a TV showcase on February 11, 2014, their image had again evolved, to uniforms of black jackets over white shirts, RM sporting a silver, slicked-back quiff, and V orange hair. Where the CD of O!RUL8,2? had been packaged with a booklet containing cartoon bios of the band and photo cards, their third album, Skool Luv Affair , came in a green case with metallic pink lettering. This was the album that reached the top spot in the Korean charts; it also got to No. 3 on Billboard World .

The hectic schedule never slowed. 2014 saw BTS go international, with trips to China in April, Japan in May, the United States in June (where a prank kidnapping of three members for a reality series, American Hustle Life , went viral), Europe in July, and Brazil in August. RM contributed to the soundtrack of the Marvel/20th Century Fox film Fantastic Four in 2015, and the band sparked global interest when they became the faces (and feet!) of Puma trainers. In 2016, they finally received the top Korean music prize, the coveted Melon Music Award taesang . 48 What next? In 2017, they began campaigning for UNICEF’s #ENDViolence, and signed on to the civil rights campaign Dream Still Lives . 49 On May 27, 2018, their Love Yourself: Tear album was announced as No. 1 on Billboard ’s 200; this was the second in a trilogy, and the third album, Love Yourself: Answer , also made the No. 1 spot on September 2, 2018. 50 Conquering Billboard had long been the ambition of K-pop’s promoters; BTS—and K-pop—had reached the global mainstream. It had challenged, and beaten, the global competition.

It would not be appropriate to offer a conclusion, since summarizing tends to overlook the fact that the story of K-pop continues to unfold, while theorizing subsumes particularity within Western frameworks—theories developed within dynamics of power, that have long dismissed the particularity of Korean cultural production and perpetuated stereotypes, that are, at the very least, unwarranted. As an alternative, is it possible to anticipate K-pop’s future? To do so is certainly not easy, since Korea continually surprises—that, surely, is in the nature of the vast conglomeration of talent and ambition, which marks its contemporary media industry. New idols continuously debut as old idols fade from prominence, entertainment companies rise and fall, and government think-tanks plan how to promote Korea in the near and medium future. 51

How, though, might K-pop develop? Well, in 2018, unexpectedly, North Korea rebranded a “pops” orchestra, Samjiyŏn, and sent it to the Winter Olympic Games in South Korea, in Pyeongchang (and Seoul). Hyŏn Sŏngwŏl, who had come to prominence as a singer with the group Pochonbo, traveled south as part of a delegation to map this visit out, and caused a media frenzy as the southern media treated her as a pop idol, despite the marked distance between northern and southern mass culture. 52 In return, South Korean pop was sent to Pyongyang—Cho Yong Pil and Lee Sun Hee to reprise their 1980s stardom, Seohyun from the early Korean Wave 2 Girls’ Generation to sing, among other repertoire, two North Korean songs, and the contemporary Red Velvet, who had debuted in August 2014. While much of the April 1 concert was broadcast in North Korea, Red Velvet were conspicuously omitted: their overtly sexualized take on K-pop was presumably too much for northern censors. Still, did such exchanges signal a new development? For some months, all seemed possible, as summits were held between the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un, and his southern counterpart (as well as US President Trump). But then came a regression; little had changed, and the cultural insularity of the northern state remained.

Again, will K-pop increase its global reach, or will it retain a Korean particularity? By early 2020, Blackpink (a.k.a. BLAƆKPIᴎK), who had debuted in Korea in August 2016 with the album Square One , was the highest-charting female K-pop group on Billboard ’s Hot 100 and 200, and three of their singles had reached the top spot on Billboard’s World Digital chart. As BTS remained under scrutiny for when they would enroll for South Korea’s obligatory national service, and whether this would end the group, Blackpink reportedly became the most followed female group on Spotify and YouTube. 53 Their single ‘How You Like That,’ released on June 26, 2020, broke the record for the number of views on its release date—86,300,000. For its video, the four idols wore updated Korean costumes—reimagined to emphasize their sensuous bodies, of course—allowing the Korean press to observe how they were showcasing Korea to the world, 54 much as had once been said of Seo Taiji, who requisitioned not only rap but the Korean percussion quartet samulnori for his ‘You in Your Dreams’ (1992) and ‘ Hayŏga ’ (Anyway Song, 1993). By the time you read this, K-pop will have evolved, but, in what way?

An Yunt’ae and Kwajun . 2012 . Yi Suman p’yŏngjŏn . Seooul: Chŏngbowa saram.

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http://koreabizwire.com/number-of-global-hallyu-fans-soars-close-to-90-million-report/130189 . Note: all websites cited in this essay were active in July 2020.

In English, starting with my edited volume ( Howard 2006 ), there is a considerable and rapidly multiplying literature on K-pop. For an overview of the major accounts, see Howard (2019) .

Throughout this article, I use McCune-Reischauer romanizations for Korean terms, except where singers, idols, and composers are known by different preferred spellings of their personal names beyond Korea (in which case their preferred spellings are retained).

Or vice versa. T’ŭrŏt’ŭ , pronounced “trot,” a.k.a. ppongtchak (an onomatopoeic term for the rhythm) and taejung kayo (popular songs).

Taejung kayo (“mass” song) is an alternative term for yuhaengga encountered in respect to both South and North Korea.

Using the term after Ivan Dzherzhinsky’s 1935 Soviet opera, Tikhiy Don (Quiet Flows the Don).

Band line-ups regularly changed, and as they did, so names changed. With Shin leading, Add4 became Blooz Tet (in 1966), Donkeys (1968), Questions (1970), The Men (1971), and Yŏpch’ŏndŭl (Common People; 1974), while Kim’s Key Boys became He5 then He6.

By this time, Shin was a vocal critic of the regime. In 1971 he had, famously, refused Pak Chung Hee’s personal request to compose a song for the regime.

For more on pop’s development prior to the 1990s, see Pak Ch’anho (1992) , Yi Yŏngmi (1998) , Howard ( 2006a , b ), and Fuhr (2016 , 39–58).

January 4–11, 1996, 75.

Some commentators not surprisingly refer to “Korean black music” (e.g., Yang 2017 ).

12 Stephen Epstein and Timothy Tangherlini’s documentary, Our Nation: A Korean Punk Rock Community (2002) , stands witness to this, although some argue punk went mainstream when Crying Nut recorded the Team Korea song for the 2002 FIFA World Cup, leaving evolutions of hip hop to carry the indie torch (for a discussion of which, in recent years, see Myoung-Sun Song 2019 ).

DiMaggio (1986) offers a contemporaneous perspective on Reagan-era neoliberalism in the arts, using the new institutionalist frame (for which see DiMaggio and Powell 1991 ), while Krüger Bridge (2018) provides a thorough overview of neoliberalism in global popular music.

14 The six-DVD set, Missing You. History and Hit Music Video Clips 1998–2003 (GM Entertainment DYVD002, 2003) collates many such music videos.

For Lee’s biography, see An Yunt’ae and Kwajun (2012) .

The three companies use their founders’ initials: SM for Lee S oo- M an, YG from Y an g Hyun-suk (a member of Seo Taiji and Boys), and JYP for J in- y oung P ark (a singer who debuted with the album Blue City in 1994).

The preference for albums is discussed by Keewoong Lee (2017) .

Commonly referred to by Koreans as the “IMF Crisis”: Korea received a bailout package from the IMF worth around $58 billion, but repaid all it had borrowed by January 2001. In 2018, an account of this period became a movie distributed by Samsung-affiliate CJ Entertainment, Kukka pudo ŭi nal (Day of National Dishonour).

Dollar amounts based on KRW1120 = US$1.

Names change over time; for example, FAVE used to be LEON, which was in turn created out of a venerable recording company, Seoul Records. For a list current in early 2020, see https://seoulspace.com/top-20-kpop-entertainment-companies-best-of-2021/ .

That is, modern life , in contrast to the Confucian tradition of old, where a rigid social hierarchy meant that one’s family and ancestors generated status and opportunity.

The costs are substantial, and Lee and Jin (2019 , preface) state they amount to more than $1 million per idol group. Note, however, that the majority of those who train never debut, and so investments in those who do not make it have to be written off.

23 Donald MacIntyre , “Show Me the Money,” Time , December 13, 2002 .

Shin and Jung are among numerous Korean scholars who have explored this, in part appropriating the Japanese term mukokuseki , that has been used to capture the non-assertive, neutral identity of Japanese popular culture (by, e.g., Iwabuchi 2002 ). In turn, mukokuseki builds on the Japanese kaizen philosophy, in which, during reconstruction after World War II, Japan absorbed Western products, improved them, and then successfully re-exported them back to the West.

Girl’s Generation is often known through the acronym SNSD, from their Korean name, Sonyŏ shidae .

See Lie (2012) , although such elements are identified by many.

Debut dates and, where relevant, the date a given group disbanded are given in parentheses. Those cited are only a few among a much larger list.

See also “The Secret behind K-pop Choreography,” https://www.allkpop.com/article/2009/09/the-secret-behind-kpop-choreography .

For a recent (at the time of writing) example, see Blackpink’s ‘How You Like That’ official dance cover video, which reached 50,000,000 views within five days of its release on July 6, 2020 ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32si5cfrCNc ). See also the non-official mirror dance instruction video by Ellen and Brian ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DyCo-RCVaU ).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doFK7Eanm3I&list=RDRKhsHGfrFmY&index=17 .

This is the unsurprising conclusion I drew in an earlier article looking at Thai students ( Howard and Lekakul 2018 ).

www.facebook.com/notes/gna-gina-choi/int-110127-all-about-stars①-gna-d-cup-complex-i-cant-wear-underwear-from-korea-j/188291564523896/ .

In respect to Girls’ Generation, see Epstein (2015) . For a detailed reflection, see Gooyong Kim (2019 , 61–106).

The question of what was imposed by the company and by contracts on idols is made in respect to Korean Wave 2’s sexualization of girl bands by Epstein and Joo (2012) .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9fO3s0S4Iw , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDYax6ABb-8 , and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VqpPtb7RJg&list=RDoR_RYmbLSFI&index=6 .

Maliangkay and Song (2015) take forward Rowan Pease’s (2006 , 184–187) observations about how Chinese fans molded transgendered images of H.O.T.; Howard and Lekakul (2018) cite similar comments from Thai fans. Note that in Korean “2” is pronounced “ea” (as in “eat,” Romanized as “i”), hence the mini-album title.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/shortcuts/2012/nov/14/can-anyone-kill-gangnam-style .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrPETRPniZM .

Wikipedia lists where it was used: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gangnam_Style_in_popular_culture .

Formerly at https://www.thevine.com.au/music/news/number-ones-psy-gangnam-style-20121002-250944 (now deleted).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMmyeXeXeK0 and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2ZAFmY2ESM .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4s3p15YAVFo .

http://cafe.daum.net/9muses/DB8A/321 .

This paragraph is indebted to Besley’s account (2018).

See https://www.mwave.me/en/mcountdown and https://kbsworld.kbs.co.kr/program/view.php?pg_seq=10 .

Taesang = grand prize. The annual awards are organized by kakao M through its online store, Melon ( https://www.melon.com/melonaward/weekAward.htm ).

See https://www.unicef.org/end-violence/kind-notes and https://twitter.com/bts_bighit/status/981684387073765376?lang=en .

See https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/chart-beat/8458036/bts-earns-first-no-1-album-billboard-200-chart-love-yourself-tear , and https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/chart-beat/8473245/bts-love-yourself-answer-album-debuts-No1-billboard-200-chart .

Regarding the latter, Korean Wave 3 has been planned by various committees and agencies since 2015: it is envisaged that support for K-pop will reduce, while the promotion of gaming and digital platforms will increase.

See, for example, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/south-korea-went-gaga-over-a-north-korean-singer-just-wait-until-the-rest-arrive/2018/01/22/ecf39004-ff7e-11e7-93f5-53a3a47824e8_story.html?noredirect=on .

54 Kwak Yeon Su , “Hanbok Sweeps K-pop Fans off Their Feet,” Korea Times , July 9, 2020, https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/art/2020/07/398_292563.html .

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South Korea is a country slightly larger than the U.S. state of Indiana. It has a population of 50 million. And yet its popular culture has gone global. In just the past few months, the television series Squid Game smashed online streaming records, the Oxford English Dictionary added 26 Korean words and the boyband BTS ’ appearance at the United Nations 76th General Assembly went viral – these are just some examples of the world’s obsession with Korean cultural content.

K-pop boyband BTS appears at the Today show on Feb. 21, 2020, in New York City. (Image credit: Raymond Hall / GC Images)

Korean cultural content is popular because it’s really good, says Dafna Zur , an associate professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures and scholar of Korean literature. Zur teaches courses on Korean literature, cinema and popular culture, and is the director of the Center for East Asian Studies at Stanford.

Here, Zur talks about what makes Korean popular culture successful and explains why it appeals to audiences around the world.

This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.

What are some distinguishing features of Korean media, particularly its dramas?

Thanks to streaming platforms like YouTube and Netflix, and to vigorous subtitling efforts – with collaboration by fans, too – Korean pop music and dramas are widely available and easily accessible. Even when the content is in Korean, there are few barriers to entry.

Korean dramas strike a balance of predictability and originality. Their story arcs are often predictable: rags to riches, rich boy meets poor girl, children defy their parents’ wishes and strike out on their own. But they have a Korean twist: Characters are deferential to their elders, sons and daughters are filial. The backdrop is hyper-modern and glitzy. The actors are polished and attractive. They play characters that are charming, vulnerable, and have a healthy dose of self-deprecation. The scripts are full of good humor. Of course, there is often a dark twist: suffocating expectation, crushing poverty, a profound secret that must not get revealed. Korean dramas humanize even the most aloof billionaires and get audiences to care – and usually, all they ask of us is 16 hours of our time.

Dafna Zur (Image credit: Miriam Lim)

Korean media pour tremendous resources into their dramas. Dramas are collaborative productions that attend to every last detail to ensure a positive viewing experience that is also wholesome and family friendly. Viewers are assured to get good shots of Korean food, fashion, street life, and gorgeous countryside landscapes.

What about K-pop? Is there a similar formula or secret to its success?

Much of the success of K-pop has to do with the idols at the center. K-pop idols are as close to elite athletes as you will ever get in music talent. They are incredible dancers. They have tremendous charisma. They are disciplined and hard-working. They know how to speak to the camera and they know how to interact with one another in a way that draws in the fans. They maintain squeaky clean images. Their behavior is held up to extremely high standards.

At the same time, they project extreme approachability. They ooze fun and kindness, and they address their fans in ways that come across as authentic. In return, fans are loyal, as loyal to K-pop idols as any sports fans are to their favorite teams. This forms a really interesting dynamic between the idols and their fans.

Idols take their fans very seriously. Elaborate communication platforms allow K-pop idols to speak to their fans and to acknowledge fans’ role in their idols’ success. Fans are fiercely protective of their idols’ well-being. They reject fans who are too obsessive, like those who deliberately book flights on the same planes as their idols. The bond that is built between idol and their fans is powerful.

BTS, for example, started as underdogs in Korea’s entertainment industry. They lacked the brand recognition of Korea’s larger entertainment companies. Their success had as much to do with the loyalty they cultivated among their fans as with their talent. Their fan base is called Army – all K-pop groups have a named fan group. Army’s enthusiasm – and membership – has only been growing in recent years.

How do your students today who are familiar with Korean culture as a consumer respond to studying the country from an academic perspective? How has the field evolved given the spread of Korean culture abroad?

I first went to South Korea in the early 1990s to get my black belt in taekwondo. I knew very little about the place I was going – I wasn’t aware that Korea had only recently emerged as a democracy, for example. There was still a lot of roughness about Seoul – it was not as polished as it is today. Traffic was a mess. Bus drivers smoked while they worked. Back then I knew little about South Korea other than taekwondo.

By comparison, today’s students have grown up with Korean popular culture. “Gangnam Style” went viral in July of 2012 – that was almost 10 years ago. Some of my students have never even seen the video because they were 8 or 9 when it came out. But they know SuperM, EXO, Blackpink, Girls’ Generation, Seventeen and so many other K-pop groups – too many to mention in one breath.

I find that students are increasingly interested in engaging with Korean culture on multiple levels. They want to learn the language, along with Korean literature, film, history, politics and popular culture. They want to understand how a small country with limited natural resources managed to become a giant economy and influencer in the cultural field. Students also want to understand North Korea and how South Korea can thrive while a nuclear North Korea, just across the border, presents a complex security threat. It is not just South Korea’s issue: North Korea shares a border with China and Russia, and Japan is just across the East Sea. Our students today know what took me years to figure out: Korea holds the key to economic, political and cultural puzzles today. And it is way cool.

Media Contacts

Melissa De Witte, Stanford News Service: [email protected]

Articles on K-pop

Displaying 1 - 20 of 29 articles.

Global auditions are changing the ‘K’ in  K-pop

Tae Yeon Eom , University of British Columbia

Glastonbury’s first K-pop group is a reflection of years of Korean government strategy

Sarah A. Son , University of Sheffield

North Korea steps up efforts to stamp out consumption of illegal foreign media – but entertainment-hungry citizens continue to flout the ban

Beyond The Story: BTS biography is a humanising, literary portrayal of K-pop ’s world-leading  stars

Jenessa Williams , University of Leeds

How ABBA Voyage and other avatar or ‘hologram’ concert performances evoke fans’ real responses

Alyssa Michaud , Ambrose University

Backlash against K-pop star Hanni shows Vietnam still struggles with the legacy of the war

Quoc Tan Trung Nguyen , University of Victoria

Hallyu! The Korean Wave at the V&A is an unflinching look at the country’s creative rise

The popularity of the Korean oegugin (foreign) influencer is on the rise. But there is a dark side to this pop-nationalism

Jin Lee , Curtin University and Crystal Abidin , Curtin University

BTS take a break: world’s biggest K-pop group is caught between Korea’s soft power ambitions and national security

Asian pop culture may be trending, but so is anti-Asian racism and discrimination

Katherine Lee , McMaster University

No, you can’t identify as ‘transracial’. But you can affirm your gender

Braden Hill , Edith Cowan University and Stevie Lane , Edith Cowan University

The #BTSSyllabus is a global resource fueled by an ARMY of experts

Candace Epps-Robertson , University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

In music and film, a new Korean wave is challenging Asian stereotypes

Hyounjeong Yoo , Carleton University

Making te reo Māori cool: what language revitalisation could learn from the Korean Wave

Rachael Ka'ai-Mahuta , Auckland University of Technology

Kia pārekareka te reo Māori: ko ngā akoranga o te Ngaru Kōrea mō te whakarauoratanga o te reo

What BTS breaking Billboard 100 means for pop as the industry knows it

Kim-Marie Spence , Solent University

TikTok teens and the Trump campaign: How social media amplifies political activism and threatens election integrity

Anjana Susarla , Michigan State University

Rethinking the K-pop industry’s silence during the Black Lives Matter movement

Hye Jin Lee , USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism

Crash Landing on You: Korean drama crosses the north-south  divide

BTS are winning hearts the world over – but we are still wary of language diversity

John Hawkins , University of Canberra and Michael James Walsh , University of Canberra

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• Korean music
• Music industry
• Social media
• South Korea

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Senior Lecturer in Korean Studies, University of Sheffield

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How K-pop became a global phenomenon

No country takes its fluffy pop music more seriously than South Korea.

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They call it Hallyu, the Korean wave: the idea that South Korean pop culture has grown in prominence to become a major driver of global culture, seen in everything from Korean dramas on Netflix to Korean skincare regimens dominating the cosmetics industry to delicious Korean tacos on your favorite local menu. And at the heart of Hallyu is the ever-growing popularity of K-pop — short, of course, for Korean pop music.

K-pop has become a truly global phenomenon thanks to its distinctive blend of addictive melodies, slick choreography and production values, and an endless parade of attractive South Korean performers who spend years in grueling studio systems learning to sing and dance in synchronized perfection.

Hallyu has been building for two decades , but K-pop in particular has become increasingly visible to global audiences in the past five to 10 years. South Korean artists have hit the Billboard Hot 100 chart at least eight times since the Wonder Girls first cracked it in 2009 with their crossover hit “Nobody” — released in four different languages, including English — and the export of K-pop has ballooned South Korea’s music industry to an impressive $5 billion industry .

Now, with South Korea hosting the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang at a moment of extremely heightened geopolitical tensions , K-pop has taken on a whole new kind of sociopolitical significance, as South Korea proudly displays its best-known export before the world.

How did K-pop become a $5 billion global industry?

Vox explore K-pop’s elaborate music videos, adoring fans, and killer choreography for our Netflix series Explained .

Watch now on Netflix.

What the Winter Olympics’ opening and closing ceremonies told us about K-pop (and vice versa)

During the Olympic opening ceremonies on February 9, 2018, athletes marched in the Parade of Nations to the accompaniment of a select group of K-pop hits , each playing into the image South Korea wants to present right now: one of a country that’s a fully integrated part of the global culture.

The Parade of Nations songs all have significant international and digital presences, and each advertises the cross-cultural fluency of K-pop. Twice’s “Likey” is a huge recent hit for the group, and recently made it to 100 million views on YouTube faster than any other song by a K-pop girl group. (The video prominently features the girls on a fun field trip to Vancouver, marketing the idea that they’re at home all over the world.) Big Bang’s “Fantastic Baby” was one of the first K-pop hits to make inroads in American culture and was featured on Glee’ s K-pop episode along with “Gangnam Style,” which also played during the Parade of Nations.

Psy’s ubiquitous 2012 hit is part doofy comedy and part clear-eyed satire, made by a musician who’s part of a wave of South Korean musicians who’ve studied at American music schools. “Gangnam Style” spent five years racking up more than 3 billion views on YouTube, reigning as the most-viewed video in the platform’s history before being dethroned in 2017.

As a whole, these songs and performers show us that K-pop stars can excel at everything from singing to comedy to rap to dance to social commentary. And their fun, singable melodies make it clear that the South Korean music industry has perfected the pop production machine into an effervescent assembly line of ridiculously catchy tunes sung by ridiculously talented people in ridiculously splashy videos. When Red Velvet sing, “Bet you wanna (bet you wanna) dance like this” in their single “Red Flavor,” they’re sending a message to the world that South Korea is modern but wholesome, colorful, inviting, and fun.

And at the Olympics closing ceremonies, we saw live performances from two more K-pop icons: solo artist CL, formerly a member of the powerhouse girl group 2NE1, and multi-national band Exo. CL’s appearance was a testament to her success in achieving one of the holy grails for K-Pop — a crossover into US fame, or at least onto the Billboard Hot 100. CL has landed on the list twice since 2015.

Exo, meanwhile, is arguably one of the two or three biggest K-Pop successes going right now. The band was a perfect fit for the Olympics — they’re multilingual and were formed with the intention of performing in Mandarin and Japanese as well as South Korea. And for several years, Exo was split into two subgroups, one performing mainly in Korea and one mainly in China. All of this made them a great choice to serve as a symbolic transition between nations, as Tokyo gets ready to host the 2020 Summer Olympics, followed by Beijing hosting the Winter Olympics in 2022.

Prominently missing from the live performance roster at the Olympics was the most popular K-pop band in the universe at the moment: BTS. BTS became an uncontested US phenomenon in 2017, with two songs hitting the Billboard Hot 100, a huge performance at the American Music Awards, a New Year’s Eve performance in Times Square, and a remix of their latest single, “Mic Drop,” done by Steve Aoki. If it’s possible to ascribe a tipping point to a “wave” that seems to be endless, BTS might be it; it certainly seems that the all-boy group has gone as far as a South Korean band can go in terms of making inroads into American culture — they recently graced the cover of American Billboard magazine. But while the band was missing from the Olympics, their song “DNA” — the other of their pair of 2017 hits — did at least play during the opening ceremonies, much to the delight of fans.

None of this is accidental. K-pop has become the international face of South Korea thanks to an extremely regimented, coordinated production system. More than any other international music industry, K-pop has been strategically designed to earworm its way into your brain — and to elevate South Korea and its culture onto the world stage.

How did we get here? Through a combination of global political changes, savvy corporatization and media management, and a heck of a lot of raw talent being ground through a very powerful stardom mill.

K-pop began in 1992 with one electric hip-hop performance

K-pop as we know it wouldn’t exist without democracy and television — specifically, South Korea’s reformation of its democratic government in 1987, with its accompanying modernization and lightening of censorship, and the effect this change had on television.

Prior to the establishment of the nation’s Sixth Republic , there were only two broadcast networks in the country, and they largely controlled what music South Koreans listened to; singers and musicians weren’t much more than tools of the networks. Networks introduced the public to musical stars primarily through weekend music talent shows. Radio existed but, like the TV networks, was under tight state control. Independent music production didn’t really exist, and rock music was controversial and subject to banning ; musicians and songs were primarily introduced to the public through the medium of the televised talent show, and radio served as little more than a subsidiary platform for entertainers who succeeded on those weekend TV competitions.

Before the liberalization of South Korean media in the late ‘80s, the music produced by broadcast networks was primarily either slow ballads or “trot,” a Lawrence Welk-ish fusion of traditional music with old pop standards. After 1987, though, the country’s radio broadcasting expanded rapidly, and South Koreans became more regularly exposed to more varieties of music from outside the country, including contemporary American music.

But TV was still the country’s dominant, centralized form of media: As of 1992, national TV networks had penetrated above 99 percent of South Korean homes, and viewership was highest on the weekends, when the talent shows took place. These televised talent shows were crucial in introducing music groups to South Korean audiences; they still have an enormous cultural impact and remain the single biggest factor in a South Korean band’s success.

As Moonrok editor Hannah Waitt points out in her excellent series on the history of K-pop, K-pop is unusual as a genre because it has a definitive start date, thanks to a band called Seo Taiji and Boys. Seo Taiji had previously been a member of the South Korean heavy metal band Sinawe , which was itself a brief but hugely influential part of the development of Korean rock music in the late ‘80s. After the band broke up, he turned to hip-hop and recruited two stellar South Korean dancers, Yang Hyun-suk and Lee Juno, to join him as backups in a group dubbed Seo Taiji and Boys. On April 11, 1992, they performed their single “Nan Arayo (I Know)” on a talent show:

Not only did the Boys not win the talent show, but the judges gave the band the lowest score of the evening. But immediately after the song debuted, “I Know” went on to top South Korea’s singles charts for a record-smashing 17 weeks, which would stand for more than 15 years as the longest No. 1 streak in the country’s history.

“I Know” represented the first time modern American-style pop music had been fused with South Korean culture. Seo Taiji and Boys were innovators who challenged norms around musical styles, song topics, fashion, and censorship. They sang about teen angst and the social pressure to succeed within a grueling education system, and insisted on creating their own music and writing their own songs outside of the manufactured network environment.

By the time Seo Taiji and Boys officially disbanded in 1996, they had changed South Korea’s musical and performance landscape, paving the way for other artists to be even more experimental and break even more boundaries — and for music studios to quickly step in and take over, forming an entire new studio system from the remnants of the broadcast-centered system.

Between 1995 and 1998, three powerhouse music studios appeared: SM Entertainment (often referred to as SM Town) in 1995; JYP Entertainment in 1997; and YG Entertainment in 1998, created by one of the members of Seo Taiji and Boys, Yang Hyun-suk. Together, these studios began deliberately cultivating what would become known as idol groups.

The first idol group in South Korea appeared on the scene in 1996, when SM founder Lee Soo-man created a group called H.O.T. by assembling five singers and dancers who represented what he believed teens wanted to see from a modern pop group.

H.O.T. shared traits with today’s idol groups: a combination of singing, dancing, and rapping, and disparate personalities united through music. In 1999, the band was chosen to perform in a major benefit concert with Michael Jackson, in part because of their potential to become international pop stars — an indication that even in the ’90s, the industry was attuned to K-pop’s potential for global success.

That potential can be seen in the studios’ eager promotion of multilingual artists like BoA , who made her public debut at the age of 13 in 2000 and in the ensuing years has become one of South Korea’s best-known exports thanks to a brand built on raw talent and multicultural positivity.

All the while, K-pop as a whole was building its own brand, one based on flash, style, and a whole lot of quality.

Don’t ask what makes a K-pop song. Ask what makes a K-pop performer.

There are three things that make K-pop such a visible and unique contributor to the realm of pop music: exceptionally high-quality performance (especially dancing), an extremely polished aesthetic, and an “in-house” method of studio production that churns out musical hits the way assembly lines churn out cars.

No song more perfectly embodies these characteristics than Girls’ Generation’s 2009 hit “Gee,” a breakout success that came at a moment when K-pop was starting to turn heads internationally due to a number of recent milestone hits — notably Big Bang’s “Haru, Haru,” Wonder Girls’ “Nobody,” and Brown Eyed Girls’ “Abracadabra.” “Gee” was a viral internet earworm , breaking out of typical K-pop fan spaces and putting Girls’ Generation within striking distance of US fame.

The combination of cheeky, colorful concept, clever choreography, cute girls, and catchy songwriting makes “Gee” the quintessential K-pop song: It’s fun, infectious, and memorable — and it was all but algorithmically produced by a studio machine responsible for delivering perfect singing, perfect dancing, perfect videos, and perfect entertainment. The then-nine members of Girls’ Generation were factory-assembled into the picture-perfect, male-gaze-ready dolls you see in the song’s music video via extreme studio oversight and years of hard work from each woman — a combined 52 years of training in total, beginning in their childhoods.

Through highly competitive auditions, starting around ages 10 to 12, music studios induct talented children into the K-pop regimen. The children attend special schools where they take specialized singing and dancing lessons ; they learn how to moderate their public behavior and prepare for life as a pop star; they spend hours in daily rehearsals and perform in weekend music shows as well as special group performances. Through these performances, lucky kids can gain fan followings before they even officially “debut.” And when they’re old enough, if they’re really one of the lucky few, the studios will place them into an idol group or even, occasionally, launch them as a solo artist.

Once an idol group has been trained to perfection, the studios generate pop songs for them, market them, put them on TV, send them on tour, and determine when they’ll next make their “comeback” — a term that usually signals a band’s latest album release, generally accompanied by huge fanfare, special TV appearances, and a totally new thematic concept.

Because of the control they exert over their artists, South Korean music studios are directly responsible for shaping the global image of K-pop as a genre. But the industry is notoriously exploitative , and studio life is grueling to the point that it can easily cross over to abusive ; performers are regularly signed to long-term contracts, known as “slave contracts,” when they are still children, which closely dictate their private behavior, dating life, and public conduct.

The studios are also a breeding ground for predatory behavior and harassment from studio executives. In recent years, increasing public attention to these problems has given rise to change; in 2017, multiple studios agreed to significant contract reform . Still, as the recent suicide of Shinee artist Kim Jong-hyun revealed, the pressures of studio culture are rarely made public and can take a serious toll on those who grow up within the system.

Despite all this, the cloistered life of a K-pop star is coveted by thousands of South Korean teens and preteens — so much so that walk-in auditions to scout kids for the studio programs are frequently held in South Korea and New York.

In addition to studio auditions, a wave of new TV audition shows have sprung up in the past few years, giving unknowns a chance to be discovered and build a fan base. Often called idol shows or survival shows, these audition shows are comparable to American Idol and X-Factor. Competitors on these shows can make it big on their own or be grouped up — like the recently debuted group JBJ (short for the fan-dubbed moniker “Just Be Joyful”), consisting of boys who competed in the talent show Produce 101 Season 2 last year and then got put in a temporary group after fans started making composite Instagram photos of them all together. The band only has a seven-month contract; enjoy it while it lasts!

These TV-sponsored idol shows have caused pushback from the studios, which see them as producing immature talent — and, of course, cutting into studio profits. That’s because a K-pop group’s success is directly tied to its live TV performances. Today there are numerous talent shows, along with many more variety shows and well-known chart TV countdown shows like Inkigayo and M Countdown, which factor into how successful — and therefore bankable — a K-pop idol or idol group is seen to be. Winning a weekend music show or weekly chart countdown remains one of the highest honors an artist or musical group can attain in the South Korean music industry.

Because of this dependence on live performance shows, a song’s performance elements — how easy it is to sing live, how easy it is for an audience to pick up and sing along with, the impact of its choreography, its costuming — are all crucial to its success. Groups routinely go all-out for their performances: Witness After-School learning to perform an entire drumline sequence for live performances of their single “Bang!” as well as pretty much every live performance mentioned here .

All of this emphasis on live performances make fans an extremely active part of the experience. K-pop fans have perfected the art of the fan chant , in which fans in live studio audiences and live performances will shout alternate fan chants over the musical intros to songs, and sometimes as a counterpoint to choruses, as a show of unity and support.

This collectivity has helped ensure that K-pop fan bases both at home and abroad are absolutely massive, and intense to a degree that’s hard to overstate. Fans intensely support their favorite group members, and many fans go out of their way to make sure their favorite idols look and dress the part of world-class performers . K-Con, the largest US K-pop convention, has grown exponentially over the years and now includes both Los Angeles and New York.

(There are also anti-fans who target band members — most notoriously an anti who attempted to poison a member of DBSK in 2006. But the less said about them, the better.)

You might expect that in the face of all this external pressure, K-pop groups would be largely dysfunctional messes. Instead, modern-day K-pop appears to be a seamless, gorgeous, well-oiled machine — complete with a few glaring contradictions that make it all the more fascinating.

Modern K-pop is a bundle of colorful contradictions

Though government censorship of South Korean music has relaxed over time, it still exists, as does industry self-censorship in response to a range of controversial topics. South Korean social mores stigmatize everything from sexual references and innuendo to references to drugs and alcohol — as well as actual illicit behavior by idols — and addressing any of these subjects can cause a song to be arbitrarily banned from radio play and broadcast. Songs dealing with serious themes or thorny issues are largely off limits, queer identity is generally only addressed as subtext, and lyrics are usually scrubbed down to fluffy platitudes. Thematically, it’s often charming and innocent, bordering on adolescent.

Despite these limitations, K-pop has grown over time in its nuance and sophistication thanks to artists and studios who have often either risked censorship or relied on visual cues and subtext to fill in the gaps.

Case in point: the 2000 hit “Adult Ceremony” from singer and actor Park Ji-yoon, which marked the first time a K-pop hit successfully injected adult sexuality into fairly innocuous lyrics, representing a notable challenge to existing depictions of femininity in South Korean pop culture.

The women of K-pop are typically depicted as traditional versions of femininity. This usually manifests in one of several themes: adorable, shy schoolgirls who sing about giddy crushes; knowing, empowered women who need an “oppa” (a strong older male figure) to fulfill their fantasies; or knowing, empowered women who reject male validation , even as the studio tailors the group’s members for adult male consumption.

An idol group’s image often changes from one album to the next, undergoing a total visual and tonal overhaul to introduce a new concept. However, there are a few girl groups — 2NE1 and f(x) spring most readily to mind — that have been marketed as breaking away from this gender-centric mode of performance; they’re packaged as rebels and mavericks regardless of what their album is about, even while they operate within the studio culture.

Yet the women of K-pop are also increasingly producing self-aware videos that navigate their own relationships to these rigid impositions. Witness Sunmi, a former member of Wonder Girls, tearing down her own carefully cultivated public image in her recent single “Heroine,” a song about a woman surviving a failed relationship. In the video, Sunmi transforms physically , growing more empowered and defiant as she faces the camera and finally confronts a billboard of herself.

If songs for women in K-pop break down along the “virgin/mature woman” divide, songs for men tend to break down along a “bad boy/sophisticated man” line. Occasionally they even break down in the same song — like Block B’s “Jackpot,” the video for which sees the band posing as wildly varied members of a renegade circus, uniting to kidnap actress Kim Sae-ron into a life of cheerful hedonism.

Male performance groups are generally permitted a broader range of topics than K-pop’s women: BTS notably sings about serious issues like teen social pressures, while many other boy bands feature a wide range of narrative concepts. But male entertainers get held to arguably even more exacting physical and technical standards than their female counterparts, with precision choreography — like Speed’s all-Heely dance routine below — being a huge part of the draw for male idol groups:

If you’re wondering whether co-ed bands coexist in these studio cultures, the answer is, not really. Most of the time , co-ed groups tend to be one-off pairings of members from different bands for one or two singles, or novelty acts that are quickly split into gendered subgroups. The most famous actual co-ed band is probably the brother-sister duo Akdong Musician, a pair of cute kids who made it big on an audition show; and even they get split up a lot to pair with other singers. (See the “Hi Suhyun” clip above, which features Lee Hi and the sisterly half of AM, Lee Su-hyun.)

It probably goes without saying that this traditional gender divide isn’t exactly fertile ground for queer idols to thrive. Despite a number of K-pop stars openly supporting LGBTQ rights, the industry aggressively markets homoeroticism in its videos but remains generally homophobic. But progress is happening here, too: South Korea’s first openly gay idol just appeared on the scene in early 2018. His name is Holland, and his first single debuted to a respectable 6.5 million views.

Hip-hop tends to be a dominant part of the K-pop sound, particularly among male groups, a trend that has opened up the genre to criticism for appropriation. South Korea grapples with a high degree of cultural racism, and recent popular groups have come under fire for donning blackface , appropriating Native American iconography , and much more . Still, K-pop has increasingly embraced diversity in recent years, with black members joining K-pop groups and duo Coco Avenue putting out a bilingual single in 2017.

Last but not least, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention South Korea’s emergent indie music scene , which includes a thriving crop of independent rap, hip-hop, and, increasingly, R&B artists , as well as a host of grassroots artists who’ve made waves on SoundCloud .

Taking stock of all these changes and paradoxes, we might be able to extrapolate a bit about what the future of K-pop looks like: even more diverse, with an ever-increasing number of independent artists shaking up the studio scene, even though most of them will still have to play within the system’s rigid standards.

This gradual evolution suggests that part of the reason K-pop has been able to make international inroads in recent years is that it’s been able to push against its own rigid norms, through the use of modern themes and sophisticated subtexts, without sacrificing the incredibly polished packaging that makes it so innately compelling. That would seem to be a formula for continued global success — especially now that South Korea and its culture has the world’s attention. Hallyu may swell or subside, but the K-pop production machine goes ever on. And from here, the future looks fantastic, baby .

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What Exactly is K-Pop, Anyway?

Since the late 90s, K-Pop has been one of South Korea’s most important cultural exports. Fans have a deeply emotional attachment to the music.

The death of Kim Jong-Hyun on December 18th, 2017, brought the world’s attention to the K-Pop industry. Jonghyun, as he was known, had been lead singer of the hugely popular band SHINee and K-Pop star for almost ten years. Millions of millenials around the world credit K-Pop for helping them destress and escape to a happier place. But what exactly is it, and why is the fan culture so intense?

K-Pop is short for “Korean pop music.” Ever since the financial crisis of 1997, it has been one of South Korea’s   most important cultural exports. Along with film and TV dramas, K-Pop is part of what is called  Hallyu,  or Korean Wave. The “first wave” swept across Asia from about 1997 to 2005/2007. The “second wave” is now. And it is global.

Dr. Sun Jung suggests that K-Pop fills a void . She points to Koichi Iwabuchi’s idea of modern Japanese pop culture being “culturally odorless,” and to Hollywood and American pop culture being shallow. In contrast, Korean pop culture represents a fluctuating postmodern world, where soft masculinity and “Asian new-rich” meet the concept of the ancient gentleman scholar.

Most people who are under 30 live in two worlds, the physical world and the online world. So it follows that they balance stress on two fronts. Professor Catherine Blaya, author of the book Adolescents in Cyberspace , says that at least  40% of French school children are victims of online violence . The experience is so traumatizing and embarrassing that they rarely mention it to their parents. This is an important backstory when it comes to understanding K-Pop fan sites, which portray a world where beautiful and approachable people from a rich and exotic country balance tradition with modern problems. For many adolescents, the gentle K-Pop idol becomes a role model. He or she (although most K-Pop bands are boy bands) is at the same time idealized and approachable.

Results from K-Pop fan studies in Romania, Peru, and Brazil, and a look at fan sites show that fans have a deeply emotional attachment to K-Pop . They take to heart lyrics like “Never give up no matter what.” They appreciate the hard training involved, the complicated dance moves, and the poetic lyrics. The movement seems to provide an escape to “another world in which all ends well.”

And this extends to the image of the country. Romanian fans describe South Korea as a land of discreet, “beautiful people, on the inside and on the outside. [People with] respect for tradition, work, and education.” In all three countries, fans say they seek out Korean restaurants and Korean language lessons. They also meet up with other fans to practice dance moves. It creates an interesting combination of online identity and physical identity.

So who are the artist-idols that attract such devotion? K-Pop stars are usually discovered as teenagers and then spend years training in singing, dancing, and acting. They are meant to be talented and flawless, seen as idols. But can any human live up to such standards?

Kim Jong-Hyun’s death has drawn attention to grueling industry practices and hurtful comments posted on social media channels, which some have seen as potentially contributing to his suicide. Shocked fans have written that they saw him as a brother. He was accomplished; he wrote songs, he could sing, he could dance, he maintained a heavy schedule. And, like other K-Pop stars, he posted personal chats and videos. He spoke on variety shows. Through these channels, fans say they saw the real him, including his battle with depression. Many fans thought “if he can overcome it, so can I.” And yet, in his suicide letter, Jonghyun said that the depression he battled had finally taken over.

Grieving fans from Singapore across the Middle East and the United States to Latin America have been holding memorials for the dead artist and laying flowers in front of Korean embassies . In Singapore, psychologist Dr Elizabeth Nair explained  “It’s akin to losing a loved one because when they are so invested in someone, this is a real relationship for them.”

For many, K-Pop will remain a happy place. But like all happy places, it has been tinged with sadness.

In the U.S., help can be found at  Suicide Help  or by calling 1-800-273-TALK (8255) in the U.S. To find a suicide helpline outside the U.S., visit  IASP  or  Suicide.org .

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“Impact of K-Pop Music on the Academic Performance of Senior High School Students”

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Danica Virrey

Micah Paygane

Mavis Illustrisimo

The rapid spread of kpop in our country has made a great impact on our people. More and more students in our school are being influenced by the groove and rhythm of kpop music. Kpop fits in our generation particularly in the 21 st generation which has already accepted the Kpop civilization. Most schools in the Philippines has been also conquered by the kpop music, it has ruled the school. Kpop generation is caused by globalization through the use of internet. That is why most of us people are updated in the happenings in our world. And like many other organizations in the internet, organizations' regarding Kpop is one of them. Facebook, Twitter and many other are social networking cites where group of people in favor of Kpop are present. We had made questions concerning about what are the psychological effects of kpop and will it affect the academic performance in the students in our school. We gathered concepts regarding pop culture (how pop music is accepted and talked from the people) and fandom theory (how fandom was utilized and enacted throughout people) to further analyze and to complete this research. The respondents were the 3 rd and fourth year classes of Lorma Colleges Special Science High School (LCSSHS) students excluding our class. This study will contribute for better understanding of people about the significance of kpop on the fans, and how it will affect people's lives.

Juan Creations

This study aims to find out the impact of watching Korean dramas among the selected Senior High school students of the Marinduque Midwest College and to determine the factors why most of the Filipino youth especially the students are attracted to watch Korean dramas. Specifically it attempts to answer the following questions: what is the socio-demographic profile of the students in terms of age and gender; what are the factors that influence the Filipino teenagers specifically the Senior High School students to watch Korean dramas and what are the impacts of Korean dramas among the Senior High school students of Marinduque Midwest College in terms of Lifestyle and Behaviors. The method utilized in this study was mixed method both qualitative and quantitative research. Respondents of this study were 106 senior high school students and selected using purposive sampling technique. Self-constructed questionnaire-checklist lifted from different sources and adapted by the researcher was utilized to gather necessary data for this study. Data were presented using graphs and tables. Frequency, percentage, ranking and weighted mean were used to analyze and interpret the data gathered. Results showed that the main factors why most of the Senior High school students are attracted to watch Korean dramas were because of the fact that it features good-looking actors/actresses (Cast) and simply the content/stories each Korean dramas depicts. Results further showed that majority of the respondents spent more than 5 hours in watching and sacrifice mostly their sleep. Topping the list of what the students adapt/pick up in watching were the language and Fashion/Style. Considering the foregoing conclusions, the researchers recommend the following: 1) The researchers recommend future researchers to tackle and focus on the content of Korean dramas through using content analysis research; 2) The researchers recommend future researchers to conduct a study on a comparative analysis between Korean teledramas and Filipino Teledramas; 3) The researchers recommend future researchers to tackle and focus on the impact of watching Korean dramas on the academic performance of the students; 4) The Future researchers may conduct further and in-depth studies on the impact of Korean dramas among the Filipino youths; 5) The researchers have recommended that the Senior High school students should practice time-management and use their time wisely when it comes in watching. Keywords: Korean dramas, Impact of watching Korean dramas, Lifestyle and behaviors, Filipino youths and Senior High school students

Marl Jeric A Robillos , Hanne Gay Gerez

This study looked into the level of K-pop influence to the third year BSEd students of Leyte Normal University. The researchers used the seven stages of K-pop fandom as indicators of the study. The underlying framework of the study is the Media Dependency theory. A survey (questionnaire) distributed through random sampling to the sample population of 3rd year BSEd students. This questionnaire designed to get a quantitative overview of the frequency about the level of K-pop Influence. The study found out that K-pop has slightly influence in most of the stages of K-pop fandom. This means that K-pop influence is minimal only.

Shasta Amor A . Salceda

Hi guys! This is a product of our craziness for KPOP and Korean culture so I hope you find this research helpful in your research papers. If you wish to have a copy of it properly, please e-mail or message me via messenger or just in google mail. Remember, Plagiarism is a crime! All contents found here are written by me and my co-author with references or credits from other researches as well. If any of you have claimed this research to be their own study will be punished accordingly. If any of you found anything similar with this study without credits, let me know. Thank you so much! You nice, keep going ♡

Drawing on qualitative interviews with Canadian-based K-pop (contemporary South Korean “idol pop” music) fans, this study discusses how transnational fans experience and interpret K-pop as a form of cultural hybridity that facilitates global imagination. In particular, the study explores how fans consume and translate transnational pop music while engaging with different modes of global imagination in their everyday lives. In so doing, the study contributes to a better understanding of the text and context of K-pop from the lens of audiences’ negotiation with globalization.

Jenica Villanueva

This research paper focused on the relationship of South Korean influence, particularly K-pop and K-drama, to the Nationalism of Grade 12 ABM and HUMSS students in EAC-SHS. It includes the strands in EAC-SHS who have the greatest number of students who are interested to either K-pop, K-drama or both. The researchers of this study found out that there is indeed a relationship between the two involved subject matters (South Korean influence and Nationalism of students) as there are respondents of the study who scored low in the test about Philippine Culture and high in the test part about South Korean Culture. The paper provided a list of the things that Filipinos, specifically the youth, can do to balance their interest towards other countries and patriotism to the Philippines given that there is a tendency of today’s generation to admire other culture which in this study is South Koreans, and appreciate less the Philippine culture in terms of its music and telenovelas.

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K-pop fans around globe rally for climate and environment goals

In this image provided by Kpop4Planet, demonstrators pose at Maengbang Beach in Samcheok, South Korea, as part of the #SaveButterBeach campaign in September 2021. The group paired with climate groups in South Korea to raise awareness about plans for a coal-burning power plant. The plant site is near the beach of the photo shoot location for album artwork for one of K-pop band BTS’s hit songs. (Soojung Do/Kpop4Planet via AP)

In this image provided by Kpop4Planet, members demonstrate as part of a Hyundai, Drop Coal protest outside Hyundai Motorstudio Senayan Park in Jakarta, May 2023. The demonstration was in protest of Hyundai’s agreement to buy aluminum from an industrial park at least partially powered by newly built coal plants. Fans of Korean pop bands around the world are increasingly channeling their millions-strong online community into climate and environmental activism. (Kpop4Planet via AP)

• Copy Link copied

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) —

Fans of Korean pop bands around the world are increasingly channeling their millions-strong online community into climate and environmental activism, protesting business deals linked to coal power, urging K-pop entertainers to cut waste and raising awareness about climate-related issues.

Other climate activist groups have begun joining forces with Kpop4Planet, an environmental group founded in 2021 by K-pop fans Nurul Sarifah and Dayeon Lee. After Kpop4Planet petitioned South Korean automaker Hyundai Motor Co., it recently scrapped a deal linked to coal power plants in Indonesia.

The ability to quickly organize a large, dedicated group has made K-pop fans an increasingly influential lobby online as they participate in protests and promote causes that have included the Black Lives Matter movement. Politicians also have tried to tap into that power.

“I spotted how K-pop fans can be seen as a potential power,” said Sarifah. “We think we can harness that power for climate change action.”

In 2021, Korea Beyond Coal— a coalition of civic groups calling for South Korea to stop using coal power — teamed up with Kpop4Planet in 2021 to raise awareness about plans for a coal-burning power plant.

The plant site near Maengbang Beach, the photo shoot location for album artwork for one of K-pop band BTS’s hit songs, is a popular destination for the band’s fans and a joint petition created by Kpop4Planet and Korea Beyond Coal got thousands of signatures.

“We realized Kpop4Planet has the experience of mobilizing and connecting people and sharing information using social media ... which is very helpful when it comes to climate campaigning,” said Euijin Kim, a communications officer for Solutions for Our Climate, which is part of Korea Beyond Coal.

The power plant is still going ahead, but the groups were able to raise awareness about the environmental issues caused by coal power, Lee said.

“We want to show the power and influence that the K-pop fans can have ... we believe that if we gather all together, we can make better social impacts and maybe change our society in more sustainable ways,” said Lee. “And, of course, love K-pop together.”

Korean pop culture fan clubs’ activism and philanthropy began in the 1960s, said Stephanie Choi, a postdoctoral associate at the University of Buffalo studying K-pop culture. Now, K-pop fans regularly organize thousands of people on social media platforms to buy gifts for wildly popular K-pop singers and bands, or promote other causes.

Sarifah and Lee have aligned Kpop4Planet’s activities with various causes, beginning with urging entertainment companies to cut back on waste related to the K-pop fan culture of collecting photo cards of band members, which are included in albums and sold as merchandise. K-pop labels often release multiple versions of albums with dozens of different photo cards, encouraging fans to bulk-buy albums to participate in lucky draws for meet-and-greet events with K-pop stars.

“The problem is that this creates a lot of waste,” Lee said in an interview. “We wanted to tackle that issue first, because it was the most well-known issue among K-pop fans.”

Entertainment companies haven’t directly responded to Kpop4Planet’s petitions and other approaches, but Lee still views the campaign as a success.

“There were changes after our campaigning: major entertainment companies published environmental, social and governance reports and published eco-friendly albums, including some releasing records using QR codes to minimize waste,” she said.

In this image provided by Kpop4Planet, members demonstrate as part of a Hyundai, Drop Coal protest outside Hyundai Motorstudio Senayan Park in Jakarta, May 2023. The demonstration was in protest of Hyundai’s agreement to buy aluminum from an industrial park at least partially powered by newly built coal plants. (Kpop4Planet via AP)

Kpop4Planet’s petition against Hyundai protested an agreement the company signed to buy aluminum from projects linked to coal power in Indonesia.

The memorandum of understanding signed in 2022 with a unit of one of Indonesia’s largest coal miners, Adaro Energy Indonesia, gave Hyundai the right to purchase low-carbon aluminum from an industrial park Indonesian officials portray as “green”.

However, the smelter used to make the aluminum initially will be powered by newly built coal-fired plants. Hydroelectric and solar power will power the industrial park at a later date.

Given K-pop group BTS’s collaboration with Hyundai, Kpop4Planet saw a chance to put their influence to work. In March 2023, Kpop4Planet launched a petition asking Hyundai to withdraw from the project until it phases out coal, and to disclose details of the energy used to make the aluminum. The petition got over 10,000 signatures in two months, and Kpop4Planet sent their pleas to Hyundai Motor’s headquarters. In March, Hyundai Motor said it had ended its agreement with Adaro.

“Following the expiry of the MOU at the end of 2023, both companies have decided not to renew it and to explore other opportunities independently,” a spokesperson for Hyundai Motor wrote in an email to The Associated Press.

Adaro did not respond to a request for comment sent by AP.

“This a victory of thousands of people, friends who took actions and also show that they genuinely care about the climate crisis and local communities,” said Sarifah.

___ Asia entertainment editor Juwon Park in Seoul contributed to this report.

Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here . The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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Dance, dance, revolution. K-pop stans use their clout for a green future.

K-pop enthusiasts are mobilizing the massive fan base to advocate for environmental protections in Indonesia and elsewhere. Their group, Kpop4Planet, was able to successfully lobby Hyundai to pull out of a deal with a coal plant.

• By Victoria Milko Associated Press

May 15, 2024 | Jakarta, Indonesia

Fans of Korean pop bands around the world are increasingly channeling their millions-strong online community into climate and environmental activism, protesting business deals linked to coal power, urging K-pop entertainers to cut waste, and raising awareness about climate-related issues.

Other climate activist groups have begun joining forces with Kpop4Planet, an environmental group founded in 2021 by K-pop fans Nurul Sarifah and Dayeon Lee. After Kpop4Planet petitioned South Korean automaker Hyundai Motor Co., it recently scrapped a deal linked to coal power plants in Indonesia.

The ability to quickly organize a large, dedicated group has made K-pop fans an increasingly influential lobby online as they participate in protests and promote causes that have included the Black Lives Matter movement. Politicians also have tried to tap into that power.

“I spotted how K-pop fans can be seen as a potential power,” said Ms. Sarifah. “We think we can harness that power for climate change action.”

In 2021, Korea Beyond Coal – a coalition of civic groups calling for South Korea to stop using coal power – teamed up with Kpop4Planet in 2021 to raise awareness about plans for a coal-burning power plant.

The plant site near Maengbang Beach, the photo shoot location for album artwork for one of K-pop band BTS’s hit songs, is a popular destination for the band’s fans and a joint petition created by Kpop4Planet and Korea Beyond Coal got thousands of signatures.

“We realized Kpop4Planet has the experience of mobilizing and connecting people and sharing information using social media ... which is very helpful when it comes to climate campaigning,” said Euijin Kim, a communications officer for Solutions for Our Climate, which is part of Korea Beyond Coal.

The power plant is still going ahead, but the groups were able to raise awareness about the environmental issues caused by coal power, Ms. Lee said.

“We want to show the power and influence that the K-pop fans can have ... we believe that if we gather all together, we can make better social impacts and maybe change our society in more sustainable ways,” said Ms. Lee. “And, of course, love K-pop together.”

Korean pop culture fan clubs’ activism and philanthropy began in the 1960s, said Stephanie Choi, a postdoctoral associate at the University of Buffalo studying K-pop culture. Now, K-pop fans regularly organize thousands of people on social media platforms to buy gifts for wildly popular K-pop singers and bands, or promote other causes.

Ms. Sarifah and Ms. Lee have aligned Kpop4Planet’s activities with various causes, beginning with urging entertainment companies to cut back on waste related to the K-pop fan culture of collecting photo cards of band members, which are included in albums and sold as merchandise. K-pop labels often release multiple versions of albums with dozens of different photo cards, encouraging fans to bulk-buy albums to participate in lucky draws for meet-and-greet events with K-pop stars.

“The problem is that this creates a lot of waste,” Ms. Lee said in an interview. “We wanted to tackle that issue first, because it was the most well-known issue among K-pop fans.”

Entertainment companies haven’t directly responded to Kpop4Planet’s petitions and other approaches, but Ms. Lee still views the campaign as a success.

“There were changes after our campaigning: major entertainment companies published environmental, social and governance reports and published eco-friendly albums, including some releasing records using QR codes to minimize waste,” she said.

Kpop4Planet’s petition against Hyundai protested an agreement the company signed to buy aluminum from projects linked to coal power in Indonesia.

The memorandum of understanding signed in 2022 with a unit of one of Indonesia’s largest coal miners, Adaro Energy Indonesia, gave Hyundai the right to purchase low-carbon aluminum from an industrial park Indonesian officials portray as “green”.

However, the smelter used to make the aluminum initially will be powered by newly built coal-fired plants. Hydroelectric and solar power will power the industrial park at a later date.

Given K-pop group BTS’s collaboration with Hyundai, Kpop4Planet saw a chance to put their influence to work. In March 2023, Kpop4Planet launched a petition asking Hyundai to withdraw from the project until it phases out coal, and to disclose details of the energy used to make the aluminum. The petition got over 10,000 signatures in two months, and Kpop4Planet sent their pleas to Hyundai Motor’s headquarters. In March, Hyundai Motor said it had ended its agreement with Adaro.

“Following the expiry of the MOU at the end of 2023, both companies have decided not to renew it and to explore other opportunities independently,” a spokesperson for Hyundai Motor wrote in an email to The Associated Press.

Adaro did not respond to a request for comment sent by AP.

“This a victory of thousands of people, friends who took actions and also show that they genuinely care about the climate crisis and local communities,” said Ms. Sarifah.

This story was reported by The Associated Press

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