Broadly speaking, K-pop comprises of all genres of popular music made in Korea. However, anyone who actually listens to K-pop, and Koreans living in the heart of it all, will tell you that not all Korean music necessarily falls into the K-pop genre.

K-pop calls forth images of youthful men and women on stage, dancing and singing to upbeat dance tracks. These performers, with their trendy clothes and synchronized moves, perfected through years and years of practice, are what we call K-pop idols.

Today, I'll take a closer look at the amazing world of K-pop, to find out how idol groups came to represent the genre, to become the mainstream of the Korean music scene.

Idol groups in Korea are crafted to perfection by a team of talented songwriters and choreographers. Singers will spend months, sometimes years, getting their song and dance moves ready for the big stage. Unlike musicians in other countries that win their first deals by sending sample CDs to major record labels, Korean idols start as trainees at the agencies that invest in their star potential.

How did this system of raising idols come about?

There's a musician that always gets a mention when people talk about Korea's idols. His name is Seo Taiji, the leader of Seo Taiji & the Boys, a band that debuted in 1992. This band, made up of three members, was the first hip hop group to hit the Korean music market.

The band's debut album swept most of the awards at every music festival that year, selling some 1.8 million copies. Until their abrupt retirement a few years later, the band released four more albums. Their songs soared up the charts, breaking musical records every step of the way.

Seo Taiji is credited with being the first idol because he was responsible for producing his band's act. Before he became the front man of Seo Taiji & the Boys, he was the bassist for the rock band Sinawe. During this period, Seo began mapping out his plans for a new hip hop group with its own brand of songs and performance numbers.

After the Seo Taiji era, the three major agencies -- SM, YG and JYP -- were all founded, establishing the blueprint for the pop idols as we know them today. It's interesting to note that YG's owner, Yang Hyun Suk, was one of the members of Seo Taiji & the Boys.

Even though idols thrived in the 1990s and 2000s, the Korean music scene was varied in terms of genre during those days. From ballads and R&B to electronic polka, or "trot" music, popular among people over 60, musicians from all sorts of genres coexisted in the mainstream. As the idol machine began to go into overdrive, the other genres were slowly pushed off the main stage.

Pop groups are manufactured according to market theory. Pop stars that are polished over years of training on the circuit must perform in a way that produces significant revenue. In other words, if an act starts out as a hip hop group but fails to impress the public and bring home the bacon, the group must shift gears on the next album with an entirely new genre. This management scheme results in a music scene that's filled with similar genres with repetitive tunes and lyrics, what critics call "music with little depth."

Despite the criticisms, pop stars affiliated with major agencies will have a more polished stage presence compared to singers from lesser known labels. It's no wonder then, that pop groups win the affection of millions of fans. Their popularity, in turn, proves the marketability and competitive advantage of pop groups.

These days, smaller labels have also started following in the footsteps of major players, adopting their boot camp models for producing the next generation of idols. This has led to an outpouring of idols on to the Korean music scene. Musical tastes have also become biased as a result.

This bias has made it nearly impossible for non-idol musicians to make it big in the music market. Of course, there are a handful of indie artists that have made a name for themselves despite the odds. Starting from the mid-2000s, a number of musicians hit the stage after winning televised singing contests, but their popularity didn't last very long. These problems have often been pointed out as the root cause of Korea's stagnant music industry. Luckily, some breakthroughs have been made in recent years.

(To be continued)

Daria Todorova teaches Korean at the King Sejong Institute in Moscow.
Translated by Korea.net Staff Writer Lee Hana.