Daria Todorova
When the genre first began spreading out to the world, it was predominantly deemed as a passing phase. Some predicted that such a vibe wouldn't continue to grow and would soon hit its limit. However, K-pop managed to gain some competitiveness against the world market, and such negative opinions are no longer common.
Surely, there is still a long road ahead for K-pop. However, personally, I would dare to say that K-pop will continue its rise. I anticipate this because of the age of its fans.
When Wonder Girls began to introduce K-pop to the world, the people who listened to the music were mainly in their teens. As a teenaged K-pop fan, all you could do was to buy the songs from the artists or attend an overseas K-pop concert. However, they grew up and now they have the ability to spend more money on what they like.
More tourists are visiting Korea to see their favorite singer or actor. In fact, one of my students plans to visit Korea more often because she has such great memories from when she first visited Korea to go to a Big Bang concert.
As the globalization of K-pop continues, such growth of consumers will be a driving force to keep Korean music popular. Moreover, there will be more and more K-pop fans and the growth will be faster.
My 5-year-old nephew is an example of this. He, like any other child, loves to dance along to music. He doesn't know who the Wonder Girls are, but his favorite singer is Psy. He's so adorable when he says, “I want to dance. Please play one of Psy’s songs.”
It's true that the Wonder Girls contributed much to boosting K-pop’s popularity, but they cannot be compared to Psy.
Although Psy couldn't keep up with his success after “Gangnam Style,” he set such great records: second on the Billboard Chart and 2.7 billion views, as of February 2017, on YouTube. His influence is drawing incomparably more future consumers of K-pop than the Wonder Girls.
Additionally, people who experienced a foreign country through music tend to accept the unfamiliar with a more positive attitude than those who have not. My nephew, and the children who grew up listening to Korean songs, will react more positively toward Korea and its arts. This, I believe, is an advantage that K-pop offers to other fields of Korean arts and popular culture.
Indeed, it will not always be all moonlight and roses for K-pop. At the center of K-pop are bands produced by companies, or “idols.” For their success, their style of music makes rapid changes to adjust to trends. The structural problem leaning excessively on idols and the shallowness of the music due to such fast changes has been criticized for a long time.
Nevertheless, the recent trend in K-pop is shifting from idols to other types of music, such as hip-hop, R&B and rock 'n' roll. Also, the current tendency of talented people joining idol groups may be the breakthrough for the distorted structure of the industry.
I would like to conclude this column by wishing K-pop continuous global growth.
Daria Todorova teaches Korean at the King Sejong Institute in Moscow.
Translated by Korea.net Staff Writer Kim Young Shin
