Rising of Korean Pop and Korean Pop Stars

Your Name
Subject and Section
Professor’s Name
May 13, 2022
Rising of Korean Pop and Korean Pop Stars
Korean Pop (aka K-Pop) has been one of the most sensational aspects of popular culture today. Globally, it is estimated that there are over 8 billion monthly streams of various K-pop songs worldwide, based on Spotify’s data CITATION GMA22 \l 1033 (GMANewsNetwork.com). This represents a rise of around 230%, which suggests its dominance in world pop culture. In line with this, this paper would like to discuss how K-Pop has achieved its fame and status in this modern-day entertainment market. The subsequent sections would initially lay out the history of K-Pop culture and the milestones it achieved through time to further understand this. After that, I would then shift my focus toward the cultural concepts that caused and accelerated the success of this cultural aspect around the world. Overall, the author believes that K-Pop’s success was due to the increasing contact and greater access to global culture, increased promotion of cultural assets, and survival of culture.
The Origin and Growth of K-Pop
Contrary to popular beliefs, K-Pop had existed as early as 1992 (some as early as 1987) when South Korea started the reformation and transformation of its government into a democratic one CITATION Rom18 \l 1033 (Romano). The rise of democracy, coupled with the increase in the reach of television, has started the rise of the genre in the entertainment industry. Before this, there were minimal musical genres since singers were limited, and rock bands were prohibited because of the belief that they might incite against the government. Nevertheless, the genre itself started when the South Korean band Seo Taiji and Boys embellished their performance by adding backup dancers to the group, thereby resulting in what can arguably be called the first K-pop music – ‘Nan Arroyo (I Know)’ CITATION Rom18 \l 1033 (Romano). Thus, the combination of pop music back then with choreography and filmography has defined the way K-Pop is made today.
Although K-Pop had been reaching an international audience as digital media became accessible to others, it would not be until 2009 when the musical genre would significantly gain a wider audience worldwide. This is also in line with the rise of technology, the broader reach of the internet, and the release of viral music like Girls Generation’s Gee, Wonder Girls’ Nobody, and Big Bang’s Haru, Haru, to name a few.
Kpop’s reach has been wider and more dominant than ever, with record-breaking concerts, revenues, and audience reach worldwide. K-Pop groups have won several awards in 2022, such as the Korean boy band BTS winning 61 awards and 115 nominations (i.e., nomination for 64th Grammy Awards for Pop Duo/Group Performance).
K-Pop’s Success and Survival of Culture
Although K-Pop’s success in the international entertainment industry was a product of various elements, one of the main reasons is the concept of Survival of Culture. Survival of Culture refers to the ability of a culture and its identity, traditions, and ideations to survive despite the continuous bombardment of outside influences CITATION Sne97 \l 1033 (Snee...