K-pop Goes Global

K-pop, short for Korean popular music, has achieved a growing global popularity in the last twenty years. A genre originating from South Korea, K-pop is currently a vibrant global pop culture that has emerged outside the West. With catchy melodies, dynamic choreography, visual appeal, and multimedia presence, leading K-pop groups like BTS and BLACKPINK have captivated international audiences, breaking language barriers and kindling interest in South Korean popular culture and in the Korean peninsula.

K-pop is not without controversies. The K-pop industry is often criticised for objectifying and sexualising young idols and for upholding exploitative labour conditions that threaten the mental and physical well-being of performers. The industry also tends to operate with a hierarchical management structure, where entertainment companies and agencies maintain significant control over their artists and strict power relations between senior and junior idols.

However, K-pop represents more than the industry. K-pop’s fandom paints a very different picture. Fandom cultures help to make K-pop groups visible in international media, including mainstream Western media. They also intersect with global youth cultures’ strategies to empower themselves through alternative identifications. For fans around the world, K-pop is a generative space of solidarity where they explore and experience potentially subversive ideas, including queer expressions of gender and sexuality and visions of multiculturalism. Occasionally, fandoms engage in political activism, as exemplified by the BTS ARMY’s mobilisation for the Black Lives Matter movement. 

K-pop’s multifaceted identity – a local pop culture with a global reach, and a hierarchical culture industry linked to global participatory culture – makes it a fascinating case of contemporary popular culture. This exhibition covers some of the salient themes connected with K-pop such as K-pop’s international reach, gender representations, merchandising, and fandom.

Second, K-pop companies conduct global auditions every year to scout talent from various countries. This strategy, which hones K-pop’s multicultural and transnational appeal, builds on the success of non-Korean members of the ‘second-generation’ K-pop groups like Super Junior, F(X), 2PM, and Miss A (groups that debuted between 2003 and 2011). This has allowed K-pop to connect with broader markets from different cultural backgrounds, making it more relatable and accessible on a global scale.

Last but not least, transnational collaborations have played a significant role in popularising K-pop globally. Partnerships with foreign artists, producers, and brands have helped K-pop artists reach new markets. Additionally, engaging in international tours and performances at events such as Coachella (US) and Kohaku (Japan) has enhanced K-pop groups’ visibility.

Recreated from original Produce 101 images 

The international impact of K-pop extends beyond music and performance. K-pop has fashioned and popularised a new model of scouting, training, and producing pop artists and new ways of integrating this model with reality TV and social media. One prime example is Produce 101, a South Korean reality audition show where trainees from different K-pop companies compete for a chance to debut in a pop idol group. This format has been sold to China (2018), Japan (2019), and Thailand (2024), creating a pan-Asian franchise that displays the K-pop-style trainee-to-idol debuting model for the consumption of TV viewers. These regional adaptations retain the core elements of intense training and audience voting.