Manufactured Creativity: Production, Performance and Dissemination of K-pop
K-pop represents a unique and distinct Korean system of “manufacturing creativity,” which involves utilizing global music talents. <br /><br />This article documents K-pop a mode of manufactured creativity, explains the term, and examines how K-pop engages in manufacturing creativity. K-pop’s business model is based on talent and represents a blend of U.S. music strategies, which favor consistency and long-term popularity, and Japanese strategies, which favor quick-selling hits. K-pop embodies creativity and longevity. It outsources creativity but also reprocesses those creative ideas internally. Such manufactured creativity is exemplified by SM Entertainment, which has been global since its start. It expanded its business network globally but also emphasized the internal process of finishing songs, which also involves creative skills and talented performers. As a result, global for K-pop is a combination of global and local.
Gil-Sung Park
Korea Journal, 53.4 (2013): 14-33.
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The Globalization of K-pop: Korea’s Place in the Global Music Industry
<p>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. </p>
Ingyu Oh
Korea Observer 44.3 (2013): 389-409.