It links Korean music with Confucian Korean culture, a link that was affected by an influx of foreign music styles (Japanese enka, genres from the United States) after 1945. Nevertheless, Korea retained a unique musical aesthetic based on the pentatonic scale and exemplified by the singer Cho Yong-pil. Following the 1970s, a U.S. influence with its diatonic scale began to inform Korean music in response to political and cultural oppression following the liberation of South Korea. This period also witnessed increased popularity of television and music, exemplified by Seo Taiji and Boys, who did not “sound Korean” and introduced dance into their performance. The rise of K-pop is related to the growth of the South Korean economy as an export market as well as the development of technology, especially digitized music and video. This is exemplified by Korean agency CEOs like Lee Soo-man of SM Entertainment. K-pop provided alternatives to American performers, Korean performers of the audiences’ parents’ generation, and J-pop, which did not have global aspirations. The K-pop industry operates like a business driven by profits rather than musical considerations. Music is merely a product to be produced and exported. Because K-pop is a product, it does not retain elements of “traditional Korea” but only exists as a brand.
]]>This article focuses on the source of K-pop’s commercial success and the meaning of that success for South Korean society and culture.
It links Korean music with Confucian Korean culture, a link that was affected by an influx of foreign music styles (Japanese enka, genres from the United States) after 1945. Nevertheless, Korea retained a unique musical aesthetic based on the pentatonic scale and exemplified by the singer Cho Yong-pil. Following the 1970s, a U.S. influence with its diatonic scale began to inform Korean music in response to political and cultural oppression following the liberation of South Korea. This period also witnessed increased popularity of television and music, exemplified by Seo Taiji and Boys, who did not “sound Korean” and introduced dance into their performance. The rise of K-pop is related to the growth of the South Korean economy as an export market as well as the development of technology, especially digitized music and video. This is exemplified by Korean agency CEOs like Lee Soo-man of SM Entertainment. K-pop provided alternatives to American performers, Korean performers of the audiences’ parents’ generation, and J-pop, which did not have global aspirations. The K-pop industry operates like a business driven by profits rather than musical considerations. Music is merely a product to be produced and exported. Because K-pop is a product, it does not retain elements of “traditional Korea” but only exists as a brand.
Korea Observer, 43.3 (2012): 339-363.
This article challenges approaches to Korean popular music based on cultural hybridity by arguing that the globalization of K-pop involves modifying musical content from Europe and other locations into Korean content and redistributing it to global audiences. In doing to, it occupies a void between Western and East Asian music industries. The establishment of the global music industry destroyed traditional structure of music industries based on physical music (albums, cds) by allowing access to music via the Internet and the demarcation between high and low culture; subcultures become easily accessible. Big Three K-pop producers rely on extended and global networks. K-pop represents a new mode of globalization, which involves exporting Korean music abroad, which has happened due to Korea’s economic rise, immigration of Koreans, participation of Korean and overseas Korean populations in global cultural industries and separate manufacturing and distribution. G-L-G (Global-Local-Global) not tenable if the “L” element is not unique. K-pop’s L element is unique because of the emphasis on numbers in groups, appearance and combination of voice and dance. Other music industries may have single aspects, but only K-pop has all three aspects, which create a unique “L” element. K-pop’s success dependent on a particular historical moment and geographic dynamics, contextualized by shifts in Korean culture, such as lifts on bans and technological advancement, which promotes global fan participation, and a global capitalist economy.