K-pop’s evolution throughout the past 20 years

Posted on : 2019-05-19 18:52 KST Modified on : 2019-05-19 18:52 KST
The Korean Wave used to target East Asian markets but has steadily expanded worldwide
South Korean artist BoA entered the Japanese market by singing songs in Japanese. The photo shows a scene captured from the 2003 music video for “Shine We Are.”
South Korean artist BoA entered the Japanese market by singing songs in Japanese. The photo shows a scene captured from the 2003 music video for “Shine We Are.”

K-pop can be regarded as part of Hallyu, or the Korean Wave, a term that refers to the globalization of South Korean cultural content. The event that brought this cultural phenomenon to domestic and international attention is generally regarded as the success of the TV drama “What Is Love?” which was broadcast on China’s state-run China Central Television (CCTV) in 1997. The popularity of the TV drama “Winter Sonat a" in the early and mid-2000s and the adoration of the actor Bae Yong-joon, known as “Yon-sama” to his Japanese fans, marked Japan’s addition to the Korean Wave. The musical side of the Korean Wave is said to have begun with “Choryeon,” a song released by dance duo Clon in 2000 that became a big hit in Taiwan.

The major market for the Korean Wave in its initial period was East Asia, especially China and Japan. More recently, however, the focus of the Korean Wave has shifted from TV dramas to K-pop, while its scope has extended beyond East Asia and into North and South America, Europe, and Central Asia—in short, around the world.

A 2018 study of the overseas impact of the Korean Wave by the Korean Foundation for International Cultural Exchange (KOFICE) divides K-pop into three stages of development.

In the first stage, South Korean entertainment companies made contracts with agencies in other countries as part of a strategy of localization, which is to say releasing albums sung in the local language and produced in the local style.

In the second stage, those entertainment companies sought to expand overseas by setting up branch offices in those countries and promoting the music of “idol” groups that were popular back home.

In the third stage, Korean-language music began standing on its own, based on YouTube and social media followings.

Psy’s “Gangnam Style” peaked at No. 2 on Billboard’s “Hot 100” list in 2012.
Psy’s “Gangnam Style” peaked at No. 2 on Billboard’s “Hot 100” list in 2012.

SM’s expansion into Japan and the rise of BoA

SM Entertainment was the first entertainment company that tried to set up shop in Japan, selecting the strategy of localization in the early 2000s. Partnering with local company Avex, SM worked with Japanese composers and management agencies to release albums filled with Japanese-language songs. In effect, they were erasing the music’s Korean nationality. One of the best-known artists in this period was BoA. The Japanese public didn’t learn that BoA was Korean until after she became popular. This same strategy fueled the group TVXQ’s success in Japan in the late 2000s.

Recruiting members from other countries to increase local appeal>

The next approach was to set up branch offices in other countries that would promote music by idol groups that were popular back at home. These groups sometimes sang in Korean and sometimes changed the lyrics into the local language, recruiting a couple of members from the target country—American, Chinese, Thai, and so on—to ensure a soft landing. This made it easier for the groups to get noticed in that country. Thanks to this approach, groups like 2PM and Super Junior have been quite popular in China and Thailand since the late 2000s.

Until that point, however, K-pop’s popularity was limited to East Asia. An event that underscored K-pop’s global potential was SM Town Live, a concert in Paris held in May 2011 featuring artists on the SM roster. When tickets to the concert sold out, K-pop fans from around Europe who hadn’t been able to snag one for themselves performed Super Junior dances in a flash mob in front of the Louvre, Paris’s iconic museum. This flash mob generated a lot of buzz, showing that K-pop was attracting fans outside of East Asia.

Barriers to accessing US market; Psy’s brief international splash

But there were considerable barriers to accessing the US music market. K-pop groups attempted to break into the market in 2008, but even South Korea’s most popular groups at the time – including Girls’ Generation, Kara, Rain, Wonder Girls, BoA, and 2NE1 – couldn’t reach the top of the Billboard chart. In fact, BoA only reached 127th place on the Billboard 200 in 2009, while 2NE1 peaked at 61st on the same chart in 2014.

The moment that K-pop began to spread around the world came when Psy’s song “Gangnam Style” reached second place in the Billboard US singles chart in 2012. But Psy wasn’t able to sustain that popularity, and K-pop’s position in the US market faltered.

BTS’ use of social media and original content appeals to international audiences

The boy band known as BTS, or the Bangtan Boys, played a leading role in rebooting K-pop boom in the US market in 2017. BTS tried a new approach to marketing themselves abroad: they communicated directly with their overseas fans through a range of digital channels, such as YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook, and sung their songs in Korean, rather than English. BTS ended up opening a new chapter in the history of K-pop, winning Billboard’s Top Social Artist award for three consecutive years.

Popular music critic Kim Jak-ga offered the following reflections in a 2019 report titled “Changes in the K-Pop Production System: K-Pop’s Two Wings”: “If BoA represented the ‘OEM’ [original equipment manufacturer] approach, with Koreans doing the creating and Japanese doing the branding, subsequent K-pop groups pivoted to an approach in which Koreans handled the management and production while incorporating local members as component parts. What made that system possible was Korea’s trainee system and its 20 years of expertise in building idol groups, which were fused into a business model.”

“BTS’ success resulted from adding and subtracting a few elements from the previous K-pop system. What sets them apart from mainstream K-pop is that they’ve positioned themselves as ‘artist-idols’ by writing their own lyrics and composing their own songs; they’ve adapted to the age of social media by releasing a wealth of media content; and they’ve sung in Korean, not English,” Kim wrote.

By Shin Ji-min, staff reporter

Please direct comments or questions to [english@hani.co.kr]

button that move to original korean article (클릭시 원문으로 이동하는 버튼)