Modern Life: What is K-pop?
K-pop – short for Korean pop – is a type of pop music, invented in South Korea. It combines Western pop with rock, gospel, hip-hop, jazz, classical and traditional Korean music.
The first big K-pop band was the boy band HOT, who first hit the headlines in 1996. These days, the band Bangtan Sonyeondan – popularly known as BTS – was worth $4.65 billion in 2019, accounting for 0.3 per cent of Korean GDP.
The perfect complexions of K-pop ‘idols', male and female, now adorn the bedroom walls and smartphone screensavers of teenagers the world over. BTS recently addressed the UN – they're that popular.
The wider phenomenon is known as Hallyu, a Chinese neologism meaning Korean Wave. Since the late 1990s, a series of targeted measures (tax breaks, company restructurings, relaxation of censorship laws and travels bans etc) have helped make Seoul the trend factory of Asia, an innovator in everything from soap operas to skin care, fashion to consumer tech.
It's not for nothing that the first non-english-language movie to win the Best Picture Oscar (Bong Joon-ho's Parasite) was Korean. And now K-pop is doing the unthinkable and challenging Anglo-american pop hegemony.
An early harbinger was Psy's 2012 hit, Gangnam Style, the first video to score one billion Youtube views. But it's the seven members of BTS – RM, Jin, Suga, J-hope, Jimin, V and (especially) Jungkook – who are the poster boys for Hallyu. Last year, they became the first K-pop band to land a number-one album in the UK. In August, they scored their first American number-one single, edging out Cardi B's WAP.
BTS translates as Bulletproof Boy Scouts, by the way. If you don't know
what WAP stands for, you'll have to google it.
So what does this crazy new music sound like? A lot like Anglo-american pop – only it's sung (for the most part) in Korean, produced to a high sheen, and comes with outstanding dance routines. Seriously, the videos are great! The main difference is, how shall we put this … attitudinal? Cardi B is filthy, she's provocative, she's hilarious and she's exactly what Western pop stars have been since, ooh … Cab Calloway?
BTS are nice, clean-cut, polite young men. Most K-pop idols emerge from reality TV or dedicated academies – a bit like Hogwarts, but for K-pop. It takes formidable dedication and sacrifice. ‘That's the reason idols seem like humble, decent people, which is a breath of fresh air compared with the braggy American/ Western artists,' enthuses one fan.
There is a darker side (there always is). Gruelling schedules, impossibly high beauty standards, youth fixation… One reporter, visiting the studio that produced the girl band G(i)-dle, noticed a sign on the wall saying, ‘Those who lack effort. Those who lack passion. Those who lack potential. Will go home'.
But be careful before you criticise. K-pop fandom is vast, online and organised. K-pop fans proved effective mobilisers during the Black Lives Matter protests and flummoxed Donald Trump's rallies by flooding event-organisers with fake ticket requests. Upset them at your peril.