Media in a Globalized World - K-Pop: Irresistible “kim-chic” charm

In recent years, it is not a total surprise to come across some catchy, repetitive K-Pop songs being played on the streets of many Asian countries, or even in other parts of the world. K-Pop, together with other Korean popular culture, has proved its popularity outside of its national borders. This essay will provide a detailed analysis regarding what kind of media flow K-Pop is, the brief history of Korea concerning K-Pop, conditions enabling the rise of K-Pop and the kinds of public that K-Pop engenders.

K-Pop – a transnational media flow, aiming to be more global in its reach

A transnational media flow, as Thussu (2010) defined in his work, showcases dominant identities of one’s nation while aiming to engage broader audiences outside of their primary arenas. K-Pop is an exemplary case for a transnational media flow. It is one of the most rising transnational media flows, starting from the East and currently reaching the West. The popularity of K-Pop in the Eastern market dated back from the late 1990s, early 2000s, together with the rise of phenomenal Korean films, namely Winter Sonata and has been escalated in these recent years. In the period of 2010-2011, K-Pop band Super Junior’s songBonamana, breaking all previous records, topped the Taiwanese music charts for 55 weeks. In Japan, BoA, TVXQ, BIGBANG, Girls’ Generation and many other groups have broken many records in the Japanese music charts. KARA, for example, achieved accumulating nearly ten times the album sales in Japan than they had sold in Korea (Asian entrepreneur, 2016). Currently, on October 14 and 15, BTS wrapped up their concert at the Osaka City Dome, successfully attracting over 80,000 fans in total 2 days (Allkpop, 2017).

One of the important factors affecting the rise of K-Pop in Western countries relates to China’s restrictions on Korea. China used to be one of the most lucrative destinations for K- Pop but currently, due to continuous, long-running political issues, this country is not deemed as viable market for K-Pop in general. Therefore, many K-Pop groups began to tour Western countries, starting from the U.S. In 2013, there were only 7 Korean concert tours in the US; yet, so far, there have been 14 and more (Liu, 2017). Since 2013, areas like North America, South America and Europe have had consecutive growth of K-Pop concerts (Benjamin, 2016). Moreover, BTS, the first K-Pop group in history, won the Top Social Artist Award on May 21, 2017 in Billboard Music Award, promising more and more records are yet to be broken by K- Pop artists in a global scale.

So far this year, K-Pop has started to expand its popularity more in Australia. KCON in Sydney on September 22 and 23 has been the biggest festival celebrating Korean popular culture, which has successfully gathered much attention and media coverage in Australia this year. In this upcoming November 27 and 29, Sydney and Melbourne respectively will welcome VIXX, a K-Pop boy band that is famous for having tried different styles of music and image concepts, to perform (SBS PopAsia, 2017).

Arguably, K-Pop has been more wide-spread in its reach, and it has potentials to transform into one of the dominant media flows in the future.

K-Pop – A mixture of Western and Korean components

To be specific, K-Pop’s production and presentation nowadays feature many professional and Western-styled procedures, which enables K-Pop to engage more of its audience from many parts of the world. First, the making of a Korean media product may involve the work of different staffs with different nationalities. For example, composers from England, Norway, Sweden and Korean held responsible to create Girls’ Generation’s song I Got A Boy. In another case, f(x)’s album Pink Tape was the product of 29 international composers coming from Norway, the U.K, the U.S, France and Korea (Guiffre and Keith, 2015). K-Pop’s music videos also make use of high quality technology with special computing effects and ton-sur-ton themes to highlight the song’s message and dance performance. For example, NCT 127’s Cherry Bomb Music Video has utilized the red color from cherries and the concept of explosive bombs, together with animation effects. In line with this, the song wants to convey the message that they, NCT 127, want to be top stars and will “explode” with charisma to captivate the audience on stage.

Second, as an attempt from Korean media companies to reach a global audience, members of K-Pop bands are now not only limited to Koreans but also from other nationalities. For example, S.M Entertainment holds different auditions in many countries, from Korea to the U.S, to scout a few “trainable and marketable” talents from more than 300,000 applicants annually (Oh and Rhee, 2016). Some Korean-Australians had undergone vigorous, all-round training systems and finally made their way to the final cut in K-Pop groups such as Kevin Kim (ZE:A) – currently the host of SBS Pop Asia and Rome Yu (C-Clown) – currently active as an arts director for many K-Pop music videos.

Third, to cater customized media products for their target audience in Eastern countries, many songs in foreign languages have been released. S.M Entertainment’s boy group EXO can be an illustration in this case. They had two subgroups within their group, called EXO-K (‘K’ for Korean) and EXO-M (‘M’ for Mandarin). Two subgroups performed same songs and choreography but EXO-K sang in Korean, while EXO-M performed in Mandarin. The fact that many K-Pop groups have foreign members who can speak English, Japanese or Chinese, together with Korean members is also a key factor in deciding the rise of K-Pop in specific targeted markets. A transnational production of K-Pop is also reflected in the case of S4 and S.O.S groups from Korean-Indonesian agency YS Media Entertainment. These groups made their debut as an embodiment of “Kin-pop”, releasing music of similar quality to that of K-Pop while aiming to maintain cultural loyalty towards Indonesian fans (Guiffre and Keith, 2015).

Although K-Pop has included many Western characteristics and features in terms of their production and presentation, K-Pop still remains indigenously “Korean”. K-Pop songs are mostly in Korean, with some catchy English phrases or words as a highlight in a song. For example, Girls’ Generation’s Gee is written in Korean, together with incessant repetition of monosyllabic phrases like “gee”, “oh” and “no”. This simple yet addictive song was the springboard for the career of this famous K-Pop girl group. Besides from many repetitive and catchy lyrics, many K-Pop songs have meaningful lyrics, reflecting social and emotional values. Sejeong of Gugudan's song Flower Way is a sentimentally thought-provoking song about the important existence of mothers in everyone’s growth into adults. Her soulful singing techniques together with the lyricism of the song had touched many hearts of listeners, which enabled her to win a first place in weekly KBS Music Show in Korea (Allkpop, 2017)

Conditions enabling the rise of “K-chic”

When looking back at the history of K-Pop, it can be said that the Korean wave, Hallyu, is indebted to the introduction of media liberalization from the late 1980s to the mid-1990s.

On the one hand, there had been some remarkable changes in Korean music industry during that time. Until the 1980s, the Korean pop music scene had been dominated by mellow, amorous ballads influenced by Western styles and ppongjjak – Japanese enka-influenced musical style, which lacked creativity and dynamism (Shim, 2011). Therefore, Korean youth had a tendency to prefer American pop songs and live concerts were not popular at that time.

However, after Seoul lifted restrictions on foreign travel in 1988, the country became more open to the rest of the world. Korean music fans were exposed to global music trends and expected new musical experimentation from local musicians. Therefore, many musicians had adapted foreign music styles (Howard as cited in Shim, 2011). In this context, the band Seo Taiji and Boys released their first rap track, called I know in 1992, marking the milestone of revolutionizing the South Korean music industry through the process of cultural hybridization. The band incorporated diverse elements of pop music into their songs and performed with rigorous dance movements. The young Korean generation’s thoughts and emotions at that time were also well reflected in their lyrics. Also, they posed a challenge for the broadcasting network-controlled music market as they recruited band members with dancing abilities to perform their songs instead of relying on dancers from the television networks. From that on, the roles of record company scouts and agencies started to become a key factor in the paths to stardom. Following the success of Seo Taiji and Boys, H.O.T, a boy band from SM Entertainment, made their debut in 1996 and then exploded in popularity with the impressive sales of 1.5 million copies for their first album (Howard and Macintyre as cited in Shim, 2011).

Through a system of training good-looking, aspiring teenagers in singing, dancing and other aspects, Lee Sooman, the founder of SM Entertainment had totally opened a new era in the Korean entertainment industry.

On the other hand, during that period, under the pressure big conglomerates from the U.S film market, the number of the local films produced in South Korea annually dropped by half in 1994 compared to 1991 as Korean government allowed Hollywood films to be distributed directly to theatres. Moreover, a sharp increase in Korea’s importing television programming also exerted a harmful effect on “political sovereignty and cultural integrity” (Shim, 2011).

In this context, the unexpected success of the film Sopyonje and a report to the government had changed Koreans’ perspectives of the importance of cultural industry contributing to the national industrial development. Following the suggestion that the government should promote media production as the national strategic industry, the government established the Cultural Industry Bureau and the Motion Picture Promotion Law in 1995. From that on, South Korean’s films gained their recognition with practical and familiar plots to Asian cultures, highly regarding family-oriented and other social values. As a result, during Asian financial crisis, many countries chose to import Korean films, instead of expensive Japan or Hong Kong’s films or low-quality films from most of other Asian countries (The Economist, 2014). Because the creative industries were identified as an important factor in the growth of the Korean economy, since then, Korean popular culture, including K-Pop and K-films, has enjoyed tremendous investment and other benefits from the government to reach overseas market (Guiffre and Keith, 2015).

As we can see, Koreans had struggled to sustain their cultural continuity in the face of globalization. However, through a process of cultural hybridization, Koreans had negotiated and appropriated global culture to creatively construct their unique cultural spaces (Shim, 2011).

Publics

K-Pop has engendered two main kinds of its public: “imagined communities” online public and concrete public at its concerts and fan meetings.

First, many kinds of “imagined communities” have been formed among K-Pop fans on social media (Shim, 2011). These communities may include people who are strangers to one another in reality, but they unite together through the participation in fandom – a group of K- Pop fans (Warner, 2002). In one particular fandom, these strangers can express their opinions and exchange their thoughts simultaneously, about their favorite celebrities. They can also be notified daily of latest information or interviews from their idols. Many idols in this generation have opened social media accounts such as Youtube, Instagram and Twitter to better engage with their online public. They often share pictures, behind-the-stage footage videos or favorite quotes from books. These kinds of ordinary, daily activities enable online fans to feel more personally attached to their idols. Gradually, these strangers may develop a sense of belonging to a certain public; however, that “imagined” community is not a concrete public as it is comprised of different people together via online platforms. This concept of “stranger- sociability” has been discussed in Warner’s work, as he firmly states “a public is a relation among strangers”.

Moreover, K-Pop also opens platforms to engage concrete audiences, specifically at its concerts and fan meetings. These kinds of public are confined to a certain space, from small hotel halls to gigantic outdoor stadiums depending on where the location of an event is. People in this concrete public join together for enjoying the singing and dancing performance of their

idols, chanting and cheering enthusiastically during the whole show. Performers on stage also know common knowledge about their public, for example, how many people might be at the location or what they may like best, and then tailor the content of the show to cater for their public.

In conclusion, Korea has been a successful case of transforming from an “un-cool” country to a “kim chic” country with its tremendous popularity of its popular culture, including K-Pop. With all potential elements at the moment, we can expect that, in the future, K-Pop will prove its extensive coverage in many parts of the world.