Abstract
In recent years, the musical genre of Korean pop (K-Pop) has gained massive international popularity. This trend is part of the greater trend of “hallyu”, or the international spread of South Korean culture and products, which in itself is part of a greater trend of globalization: the traversing of the Eastern/Western binary in order to market products within an increasingly globalized system. The genre’s success in Western music markets can ultimately be attributed to the process that goes into its production. K-Pop companies have meticulously constructed a hybridized product that possesses universal appeal due to its “Western-ness”, while also differentiating itself on the music market through the accentuation of its “Korean-ness”. Through strategic image-making and digital marketing, this once niche genre has been able to flourish within an increasingly globalized neoliberal system.
Keywords: Hallyu, South Korea, K-Pop, Globalization, Neoliberalism
Introduction:
In the band BLACKPINK’s video for “Kill This Love”, which has over 640 million views on YouTube[1], singer Lisa enters onscreen, rapping in both Korean and English and whipping her hair, which is styled in box braids. This song is only one of thousands within the global musical phenomenon of K-Pop. Combining both Eastern and Western elements and aesthetics, K-Pop bands such as BTS and BLACKPINK now perform to sold-out crowds worldwide. The massive popularity of K-Pop is only a part of the greater trend of “hallyu”. Hallyu, or the “Korean wave”[2], is the massive global surge of South Korean culture and products[3], which itself is only part of a greater trend within globalization: the traversing of the Eastern/Western binary in order to market products within an increasingly globalized capitalist system. The cataclysmic rise of this once niche musical sub-genre is no accident. Rather, K-Pop’s mass proliferation is the very deliberate result of South Korea’s push to take advantage of an increasingly globalized system. The genre’s success in the Western music market can ultimately be attributed to K-Pop’s stringent production process, which has resulted in a hybridized Korean and Westernized product that possesses universal appeal due to its “Western-ness”, while also differentiating itself through the accentuation of its “Korean-ness”. This strategy has resulted in a cultural hybrid with broad appeal to both a domestic and an international market, and through strategic image-making and digital marketing, K-Pop has been able to flourish within the global neoliberal market system.
Digitization and K-Pop’s Transition from Domestic to Global Phenomenon
Beginning in the mid-1990s[4], K-Pop has transitioned from a domestic to a global phenomenon, and one of the greatest contributors to its popularization and proliferation was the rapid digitization of the music industry in South Korea. According to Messerlin and Shin, South Korean music companies “have been the first in the world to fully [realize] the potential of new internet technologies”[5] with regards to the distribution and marketing of K-Pop. The digital age has revolutionized the music industry, as consumers are no longer obligated to obtain music through limited distribution means (such as purchasing records or CDs). Now, almost all music is available for a low cost through digital streaming sites such as Spotify and Apple Music, or for free through popular websites such as YouTube. Digitization has also eliminated the need for a distribution middleman (such as a radio station) for music production companies, and instead allows companies to post their music directly online. While in the past recording companies owned and managed the copyrights of the music they distributed, music producers in the digital, globalized age of music are now able to “recruit, train, and own artists [themselves] in addition to the copyright of the music sold online”.[6]
Because South Korean electronics companies have rapidly come to the forefront of internet-related musical technology, K-Pop companies have been able to become privy to the latest technological opportunities earlier than their other OECD competitors.[7] These new technologies worked well for small businesses (like the leading K-Pop companies were, and still are) due to their smaller investment requirements and lower entry costs.[8] Lastly, because K-Pop companies did not own CD factories, they had no vested interests in the industry, and were therefore able to quickly re-strategize and move away from it after the 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis, which led to a period of emergent neoliberalism.[9] South Korea was able to adopt an online sales market much earlier and much quicker than their competitors, and for this reason the online sales market in South Korea continues to be more developed than in any other major OECD country.[10] This trend is made evident by the fact that in 2012, the value (in USD) of online sales in South Korea was one and a half times greater than in the United States, despite the fact that the American music market is six times larger than its South Korean counterpart.[11] Since 2008, the K-Pop industry has increasingly been “pouring human and monetary capital into the American popular music industry”[12], in order to gain access to its lucrative market.
Marketing and advertising strategies created specifically for the digital age are also present in many other forms. K-Pop companies such as SM Entertainment, YG Entertainment, and JYP Entertainment purposefully aim for “‘visual’ segments, such as cosmetics, fashion and food products, [and] by inducing their stars to become models”.[13] These “visual” marketing strategies are tailored for digital media, and aid in the creation of a unique and identifiable brand, “at the firm level and even at the K-Pop group level – [which are] increasingly recognizable in the world and, hence, increasingly difficult to copy”.[14] After these advertisements are created, they are spread on popular social media sites such as YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, which have all become powerful marketing tools.[15] Social media has also allowed K-Pop fans to play a more active and involved role. Through the use of media such as online blogs, fan websites, fan-fictions, and fan-made videos, fans are not only consumers, but inadvertently also become disseminators themselves.[16] Working in tandem the K-Pop music industry, K-Pop celebrities, or “idols”, and their worldwide fanbases have used social media to amplify K-Pop’s global presence, which has brought the genre to the forefront of the contemporary transnational pop culture scene.[17]
The Role of Westernization in K-Pop’s Success
While marketing is an integral aspect to K-Pop’s success, K-Pop must also have a broadly appealing visual aesthetic if it wishes to appeal to a large international audience. As stated by Valean, “contemporary Korean popular culture is produced under the influence of the Western hegemony”[18], and because of this, it must make itself familiar to Western audiences in order to be internationally successful. One form of Western integration that is especially evident in K-Pop is visual references to American hip-hop, frequently seen in thousands of K-Pop music videos. In his music video for “Crayon”, South Korean rapper G-Dragon breakdances, wears claw-like brass knuckles and sports oversized jewelry.[19] In the aforementioned “Kill This Love” music video, BLACKPINK singer Lisa raps and wears her hair in box braids.[20] In the music video for “I Got A Boy”, the singers of Girls’ Generation wear streetwear, including bandannas and baggy pants.[21] All three music videos are incredibly colourful and almost cartoon-like, and Chuyun Oh states that by incorporating a bubbly and vibrant aesthetic into his music video, G-Dragon “deliberately takes off the dark and often criminalized image of hip-hop”[22], re-situating it in a “highly cute, bright, and mischievous context”.[23] Both BLACKPINK and Girls’ Generation do the same in their respective music videos. By appropriating the aesthetics of African-American culture, they appropriate and exploit its cultural capital, while blatantly ignoring and sanitizing its underlying politics. Chuyun Oh states that G-Dragon’s appropriation of African-American culture “creates complex layers of racial and gender hybridity”[24], which are based around a profit-driven strategy to exploit foreign cultural capital for economic gain.[25]
The increasing influence of Western culture on non-Western music, specifically the English-language integration into K-Pop, is often tied to economic growth and modernity.[26] While Western culture was stigmatized and banned in South Korea during the 1970s and 1980s by president Park Chung-hee’s authoritarian regime[27], attitudes towards the Western world began to change after the emergence of the “new generation” (sinsedae) under the government of Kim Young-Sam, who was elected in the early 1990s.[28] Since then, the English language has been used as a tool to expand K-Pop’s market to both the rest of Asia as well as the Western music market. While some K-Pop groups and singers learn local languages (such as Japanese) in order to appeal to neighbouring markets, the majority learn English because of its role as a musical lingua franca[29], as well as its ability to expand their target audiences exponentially.
English is strategically used in the choruses and hooks of K-Pop songs, as this makes them easier for international audiences (the majority of whom have no familiarity with the Korean language) to both sing and remember. Because of this, several entertainment companies have invited American composers to create K-Pop melodies, and as of September 2009, approximately sixty American composers had received contracts from K-Pop production companies.[30] The exponential increase of the use of the English language in K-Pop is evidenced by the top song titles in the K-Pop industry. In the top fifty popular music list of 1995, there were only four song titles using English (8%), increasing to nine (18%) in 2005, and twenty-two (44%) by 2010.[31] A decade has passed since these statistics were calculated, and the trend of both English language integration, as well as English co-production, will likely continue. The rapid integration of English into K-Pop has created a hybridized music genre that balances the “exoticism” of the Korean language and South Korean culture with the familiarity of the English language, the world’s lingua franca.
The Role of Korean Identity in K-Pop
Lastly, K-Pop has been able to strategically differentiate itself through a diametrically opposite and distinctly “Korean” approach to its image. According to Valean, this espousal of so-called “traditional” values is also one of the keys to K-Pop’s success.[32] K-Pop idols are required to behave according to very stringent standards that are set by their companies.
Both male and female K-Pop idols are expected to maintain a “perfect” public and private image, and both their personal and professional lives are meant to be “equally decorous and neither threatening nor salacious”.[33] K-Pop idols must also adhere to the traditional Asian conservative attitude towards sex and sexuality.[34] While idols’ dance moves are often provocative and sexually suggestive, there is rarely any direct implications of sex in their videos (for instance, they are never portrayed dancing provocatively with a performer of the opposite sex). Female K-Pop idols in particular are expected to look glamorous both on and off-stage, and while provocative, they purposefully lack the hypersexualized image of many of their contemporary Western idols.[35] Korean beauty ideals are heavily influenced by ever-shifting capitalist consumerist trends, which place heavy pressure on individual women and men to manufacture themselves according to international standards of desirability.[36] In South Korea, high levels of social competitiveness have risen to match the growing demands of physical perfection, and self-discipline and technological enhancement are increasingly expected, even among the general population.[37] Under such pressure to attain an internationally desirable image, many K-Pop idols opt to physically “Westernize” themselves through the use of cosmetic surgery (such as eyelid surgery, which modifies “Asian” monolids into “Caucasian” double-eyelids), skin-bleaching creams, and hair dye to change black hair into brown, blond, or red hair). Despite this, their distinctly Asian physical features continue to situate them as foreign “others” within the Western-dominated music market.[38] K-Pop performers’ image is so highly calculated because the idols are meant to serve as ambassadors to their country, and are meant to portray the bourgeois Korean state as it wishes itself to be portrayed in the media.[39] The highly controlled public persona of K-Pop idols is also necessary because public scandals in South Korea often have much long-lasting social repercussions.[40] Due to these marked differences, both cultural and physical, K-Pop has been able to carve a cultural niche for itself within the musical and greater popular culture market. K-Pop is a genre that exists at the intersection of globalization and race, and has defined itself through a distinctive “Asian” racial identity through its espousal of Korean cultural values, while also strategically integrating Western themes in order to expand its market.
Conclusion
As the Korean Foundation for International Cultural Exchange (KOFICE) claims, “different countries around the world are cultivating their cultural industries competitively”.[41] The KOFICE states that there is currently intense competition between countries to utilize their “cultural industries” to both revive their domestic economy as well as “step onto the global stage”[42]. K-Pop, as a subset of the greater hallyu movement, has played an integral part in allowing South Korea to step out onto the global stage and capture an international market. Through its strategic use of digital marketing, as well as its deliberate appropriation of Western culture and aesthetics, K-Pop has strategically been able to market itself to a Western audience, allowing the once niche sub-genre to become a transnational and transcontinental global phenomenon in under 25 years. It continues to undergo changes and adaptations, and the once monocultural face of K-Pop is beginning to shift, with non-Korean K-Pop idols from Japan, mainland China, Taiwan, Thailand, and the United States slowly beginning to enter and influence the industry.[43]
Lauren Lai-Sying Turner is a fourth-year undergraduate student studying Diaspora and Transnational Studies, Anthropology, and English at the University of Toronto.
Bibliography
BLACKPINK. “BLACKPINK – ‘Kill This Love’ M/V,” BLACKPINK. Posted on April 4, 2019.Video file, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2S24-y0Ij3Y.
Epstein, S., & Joo, R.M. “Multiple Exposures: Korean Bodies and the Transnational Imagination.” The Asia-Pacific Journal. 10(33)(2012): 1-19.
G-Dragon. “G-DRAGON – CRAYON(크레용) M/V,” BIGBANG. Posted on September 16, 2012. Video file, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3ULhmadHkg.
Girls’ Generation. “Girls’ Generation 소녀시대 ‘I GOT A BOY’ MV,” SMTOWN. Posted on December 31, 2012. Video file, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wq7ftOZBy0E.
Hogarth, H.K. “The Korean Wave: An Asian Reaction to Western-Dominated Globalization.” Perspectives on Global Development and Technology. 12 (2013): 135-151.
Jin, D.Y., & Ryoo, W. “Critical Interpretation of Hybrid K-Pop: The Global-Local Paradigm of English Mixing in Lyrics.” Popular Music and Society, 37(2) (2012): 113-131.
Lee, S., & Nornes, A. M. (Eds.). Hallyu 2.0: The Korean Wave in the Age of Social Media. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2015. Lee, W. Diversity of K-Pop: A Focus on Race, Language, and Musical Genre. Bowling Green KY: Graduate College of Bowling Green State University, 2018.
Messerlin, P. A., & Shin, W. “The Success of K-Pop: How Big and Why So Fast?” Asian Journal of Social Science, 45 (2017): 409-439.
Oh, C. Performing Post-Racial Asianness: K-Pop’s Appropriation of Hip-Hop Culture. Congress on Research in Dance Conference Proceedings, (2014): 121-125.
Oh, I. “The Globalization of K-pop: Korea’s Place in the Global Music Industry.” Korea Observer, 44(3) (2013): 389-409.
Valean, N.S. (2017). Creative Industries in South Korea: The Korean Wave. Facultat de Ciències Jurídiques i Econòmiques, University Jaume. Jaume, VLC.
[1] BLACKPINK., “BLACKPINK – ‘Kill This Love’ M/V,” Posted April 4, 2019, Video file, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2S24-y0Ij3Y.
[2] H.K. Hogarth, “The Korean Wave: An Asian Reaction to Western-Dominated Globalization,” Perspectives on Global Development and Technology. 12 (2013): 135.
[3] Lee, S., & Nornes, A. M. (Eds.), Hallyu 2.0: The Korean Wave in the Age of Social Media. (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2015), 6.
[4] D.Y. Jin & W. Ryoo, “Critical Interpretation of Hybrid K-Pop: The Global-Local Paradigm of English Mixing in Lyrics,” Popular Music and Society, 37(2) (2012): 128.
[5] P. A. Messerlin & W. Shin, “The Success of K-Pop: How Big and Why So Fast?” Asian Journal of Social Science, 45 (2017): 425.
[6] I. Oh, “The Globalization of K-pop: Korea’s Place in the Global Music Industry,” Korea Observer, 44(3) (2013): 393.
[7] P. A. Messerlin & W. Shin, “The Success of K-Pop: How Big and Why So Fast?” 426.
[8] Messerlin & Shin, “The Success of K-Pop,” 426.
[9] N.S. Valean (2017). Creative Industries in South Korea: The Korean Wave. Facultat de Ciències Jurídiques i Econòmiques, University Jaume. Jaume, VLC, 16.
[10] Messerlin & Shin, “The Success of K-Pop,” 426.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Lee & Nornes (Eds.) “Hallyu 2.0,” 2.
[13] Messerlin & Shin, “The Success of K-Pop,” 429.
[14] Ibid.
[15] Lee & Nornes (Eds.) “Hallyu 2.0,” 3.
[16] Valean, “Creative Industries in South Korea,” 24.
[17] Lee & Nornes (Eds.) “Hallyu 2.0,” 180.
[18] Valean, “Creative Industries in South Korea,” 24.
[19] G-Dragon. [BIGBANG], “G-DRAGON – CRAYON(크레용) M/V,” Posted on September 16, 2012, Video file, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3ULhmadHkg.
[20] BLACKPINK., “BLACKPINK – ‘Kill This Love’ M/V,” Posted April 4, 2019, Video file, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2S24-y0Ij3Y.
[21] Girls’ Generation. [SMTOWN]. (2012, December 31). “Girls’ Generation 소녀시대 ‘I GOT A BOY’ MV,” Posted December 31, 2012, Video file, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wq7ftOZBy0E.
[22] C. Oh, Performing Post-Racial Asianness: K-Pop’s Appropriation of Hip-Hop Culture. Congress on Research in Dance Conference Proceedings (2014), 123.
[23] Ibid.
[24] Ibid., 124.
[25] Ibid.
[26] W. Lee, Diversity of K-Pop: A Focus on Race, Language, and Musical Genre (Bowling Green, KY: Graduate College of Bowling Green State University, 2018) 46.
[27] Ibid., 45.
[28] Ibid., 45-46.
[29] Jin & Ryoo, Critical Interpretation of Hybrid K-Pop, 120.
[30] Ibid.
[31] Ibid., 123.
[32] Valean, Creative Industries in South Korea, 24.
[33] Ibid., 18.
[34] Ibid., 19.
[35] Ibid., 18.
[36] S. Epstein, & R.M. Joo, “Multiple Exposures: Korean Bodies and the Transnational Imagination,” The Asia-Pacific Journal. 10(33) (2012): 12.
[37] Ibid., 1.
[38] Hogarth, “The Korean Wave: An Asian Reaction to Western-Dominated Globalization,” 149.
[39] Valean, Creative Industries in South Korea, 18.
[40] Ibid., 31.
[41] Lee & Nornes (Eds.) “Hallyu 2.0”, 8.
[42] Ibid.
[43] Lee, Diversity of K-Pop: A Focus on Race, Language, and Musical Genre, 55.
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