Understanding the K Pop Phenomenon

It would have taken a particularly gifted Nostradamus in the 1990s to predict both the demise of the traditional western rock band and the rise and rise of their South Korean replacements. yet that's what happened?

But how did it happen? Join me as we take a medium-sized dive into what K Pop is all about and how come it's been such a runaway success.

Be expertly briefed each week on a wide variety of intriguing musical topics.

Transcript

Medium Sized Dive

What exactly is K Pop?

K Pop at heart is the popular music of South Korea. Its main style is a fusion of pop, hip hop and R&B, but it can take in many other genres within its tent. The term K Pop itself became popular in the 2000s especially internationally interestingly the Korean term that lingers for domestic pop music is Gayo. K Pop can refer to all pop music from South Korea, but it is most often associated with the entertainment and particularly the idol industry in the country

K Pop idol culture began in the 1990s and rapidly amassed enormous fandoms of teenagers and young adults. That then mutated into rap dance in the early 90s, then from the early 2000's the idol industry helped the music genre gain traction in the neighbouring Japanese market and from there continues to popularise K pop internationally.

K pop is currently ranked 6th amongst the top 10 music markets worldwide.

What are its characteristics?

A K Pop song will be a fusion of synthesised music around pop, hip hop and R&B, but critically will be accompanied by a sharp dance routine and the fashion sensibilities of the group itself, another critical element

A defining characteristic of K Pop is the idol trainee methodology through agency auditions then online auditions and then casting. Often a young would-be performer will sign a 10-year contract in which he or she almost signs away every element of their young lif. This robotic system of training is often criticised inWestern media. There's been much publicity about the mental health issues associated with the training regimes and tragically there have been some suicides and casualties along the way.

Certain academics have identified transnational values which have been a major part of the international success of K Pop. So, across the globe different ethnicities .different nations and even different religious backgrounds can identify with a dedication to high quality output and presentation of their idols as well as their work ethic and polite social demeanour all of which is made possible by the intense training which typically lasts many years.

Another reason for K Pop's international success is its deployment of English phrases. Much as ABBA did in the 1970s<such as Fly to the Sky, Rich and Drunken Tiger. Increasingly foreign songwriters and producers are employed to work within K pop, people such as will i am, and Sean Garrett. Kanye West, Ludacris and Snoop Dogg have also featured on K Pop songs Korean names in K pop bands have gradually been replaced by English names, e.g. Sister Beast and After School 

OK that is a whistle stop tour which will brief you on what K Pop actually is. Let's have a look now at why K Pop has succeeded.

Reasonable Debate

Why is K Pop such a phenomenon now?

The first thing to say is some analysts believe that K Pop has peaked around about the immediate post COVID era and now it is becoming steadily less popular. This should not surprise us if we look back at the history of popular music. Genres have a shelf life and then they become outdated fairly rapidly

That said, this K Pop phenomenon is one that has been around for far longer than most genres. It arrived on the international stage at a time when pop music was enduring one of its lows. After the last great band music explosion of the 1990s several things happened 

One, the digital revolution made many of the old templates redundant. Then at around the same time at the turn of the century the only interesting rock music was the alternative scene in the New York area led by The Strokes and so forth. The days of the mega rock band were coming to an end.

As is now pretty well known western style bands are pretty much dead as a genre. In the UK for example it's very rare for a band to make the Top 40. Very occasionally one does or it's a legacy act such as Coldplay or the Arctic Monkeys - or The Beatles.

K Pop has capitalised on a gap in the market where people were looking for what they often do look for in pop music, which is to identify not with an individual but with a band. People like the different personalities, people enjoy their interviews when they show those personalities on a sofa, people can identify with different individuals within the band much as they used to with the characters on the Star Trek bridge. There's something about a band that an individual artist can't provide.

Companies are very clear about this and provide very clear distinctive characters for people to identify with. The success of the Spice Girls at the end of the 90s with their name coded distinctiveness was not unique or particularly innovative but it would have provided the most recent template for the K Pop industry to have seen the international opportunities that could be capitalised upon ..

Indentured labour

K Pop has been described as a system of indentured labour and honestly it's kind of hard to disagree with that.

Now I have done my research but I am also here to let you know that I would not pass myself as an expert on K Pop. However this is what is my research revealed.

There is an intense recruitment process to join a K Pop band. Hundreds, maybe thousands, go to the auditions out of which somewhere between 7 and 10 candidates become the nucleus of the new band.

They then sign a contract which binds them for say 10 years; this restricts what they say and do but most significantly if they renege on the contract then they have to pay back all the money that the company has invested in them. Bear in mind that rather like football or boxing perhaps in many countries, becoming a K Pop star for a family having a member in it is the equivalent of hitting the jackpot, so you can imagine the pressure which is associated with it. Just stick it out, it may not be a lot of fun, but just stick it out

The range of behaviour and looks that are tolerated are extremely narrow for an idol and any deviation will result in a massive hate train from the Korean public. So we're talking there about in-person protests and ongoing pressure campaigns for the company to fire the idol. If we just take a step back and look at South Korea's employment rights as a developed country, they're pretty bad and the idol industry is no exception. There have been a lot of documented cases of idols being effectively abused by their companies and even the idols who are considered to be well treated by K Pop standards have to do things that we would generally regard from our employer as being completely unreasonable and inhumane: for example, going 20 hours or more without sleep and then having to perform taxing and often dangerous choreography at the end of it.

The financial rewards are great but the emotional damage caused to these young people well it takes its toll to such a degree that it breaks many of them. How does this come about? Well let's have a look at how this whole K Pop infrastructure came about in the first place.

How businesses make money from pop music

So there are basically two ways of making money from pop music

The way that was perfected in the 40s and 50s was the Tin Pan Alley structure. Writers were separated from performers. We didn't expect Frank Sinatra or Elvis Presley to write their own songs. The whole business was run by companies and record company labels who set up a system whereby the writers were paid and the performers performed and recorded the songs and made money accordingly.

Then two things changed.

First The Beatles made it possible for a group to combine both of those activities and make vast amounts of money which created a new template for pop music. And then the economic backdrop changed. For the first time teenagers had excess money to spend and it was very much in the interests of the people who ran the music business to get them to direct as much of that money as possible towards paying for the music.

The Beatles' blueprint lasted for nearly half a century. K Pop saw the opportunity to revert to the pre Beatles model of separating writers and performers; but at the same time making best use of group dynamics.

Whether K Pop has peaked or not, the infrastructure that was created has resulted in a business where there's vast amounts of money for everyone involved.

The importance of Korea as a location

The last point I want to come onto is the K in K Pop. 

When I was growing up America, American groups, American TV, American films were the aspiration. America hasn't entirely gone away of course. But there has been a shift. Seoul and Korea on their aspirational in a way that would have been unimaginable in the 60s and 70s and 80s.

One guy who was ahead of the curve was Ridley Scott. And the reason I bring him up is because he set Blade Runner in the early 90s in a future that looks remarkably like a version of Seoul at night today. Also worth mentioning is the fact that unlike so many western cities Seoul still has an urban centre where young people thrive and indeed live. In places like London you have to either work in finance or the law or have inherited vast amounts of money to live within 10 kilometres of the city centre.

So K Pop coincided with and to a degree shaped the evolution of Seoul and more broadly South Korea into the zeitgeist location of today.