Korean Pop Music As South Korea's Pride

‘Since you become a KPOP fan, one of your dream/goal in life is to go in Korea’. ― @kfanscanrelate

Long time ago, year 1997-1998, Asian economy faced a major crisis called Asian Financial crisis that affects different countries in Asia including South Korea alongside with Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia and lost more than $100B (Ba, n,d, ). In this case, as Kpop began in 1992 after the debut of idol group Seo Taiji and Boys (Oak et al, 2013) music was used by government and gave such a huge help to rebuilt the economy and Korean pop music became the part of South Korea’s development through the years. (Soesmento, 2018, par. 8). Music is everywhere and anywhere that now become a part of people’s daily lives. Listening to music helps every individual to express their expressions in different way and this might be the reason why people are into music. Even in different language, every individual can feel every songs’ emotions as they are appreciating it more than just listening to it. South Korea shows how influential they can be and proved how their culture can dominate different countries. In fact, according to MartinRoll (2018) Korean government has its full support to Korean pop culture also known as Korean wave (Hallyu wave) which includes music, dramas, food, and fashion or Korean brands and has its own ministry to support the Korean entertainment industry.

To begin with, improving global image is one of the main focus of South Korea to attract and gain people’s attention in order to achieve the economic growth and by means of achieving it, one of the best way is to increase the demand of tourism. This results in using the rise of Korean Pop Music that began on 1990’s with the help of different idols such as Seo taeji and Boys alongside with the first to the latest generation of Kpop idols (Oak et al, 2013) and it really shows how wise their government to take the opportunity and develop their entertainment industry as well as their tourism. In fact, according to Bae et al (2017) “In 2014, the content export of the music industry increased 21.0% compared to the previous year, and the average annual increase rate of K-POP was 41.7%”. This kind of development has a greater chance for them to keep forward and promote music as a foundation of success. In addition, as PSY, the person behind the popular “Gangnam Style” on 2012, was actually one of the reason of the global success of Koreap pop music as it topped different charts worldwide (Korea.net, n.d) and according to Parodi (2015), “Korean music industry grossed nearly $3.4 billion in the first half of 2012, the year Gangnam Style came out, which is a 27.8 percent increase from the same period the year before” (Billboard, 2012). This is literally the impact of music industry to Korea’s economy growth and paved the way to attract foreigners. As soon as Korean pop music blew up, the Korean tourism increase as many people wants to go to Korea to personally see their idols and experience different activities connected to Kpop that actively promoted by Korean tourism (ivisitkore.com, 2019). However, as the idols are behind the rising Korean Pop music, despite of the beneficial effect on Korea’s economy, it affects them personally as they work hard to be part of success. In Korean music industry, being able to sing is not enough for someone to become one of K-pop star (Chua, 2017). In fact, South Korea is known for having different agency that trains people who aspire to be a talented K-pop star and helps to be popular and develop their global image. To achieve the desired goals of being the popular star, trainees need to work hard through their blood, sweat and tears. Despite of hardship, they have no choice because it is something they need. Hence, they give more effort to avoid failure even though debuting is not guarantee. Another point is according to Romano (2018), through contracts, agencies are sometimes being abusive to their idol in able to achieve the global image of every artists.

Moreover, as time passes by, many people around the world were being attracted to Korean pop music and with such a big popularity, there is no doubt that fans contributed and will forever contributed to Korean wave. Also, listening and appreciating Korean Pop music is something beneficial for some as they used it as an inspiration. People who became fans and belong to a fandom of a certain artist believe that Korean pop is giving them an inspirational impact wherein they are able to use it socially and even academically (Labrador et al, 2018). If there is a positive impact of Korean pop music to people or fans, then there is also a negative impact that may be sounds crazy. Spending too much money just to buy albums, spending too much time on watching music videos and supporting them non-stop is given as many fans around the world is doing this but there are times that Korean pop music pushed them to go beyond. For example, is the “sasaeng” fans also known for being crazy fans that can do anything just to get what they want to their idol. According to Benjamin (n.d) sasaeng fans tend to attack idols and do things like entering to their idol’s private life without any hesitations. This kind of act is basically In addition, there are some anti-fans that can easily do what they want to attack kpop stars like poisoning them just to release their bad feeling towards certain idols (Romano, 2018).

On the other hand, South Korea is very influential through its entertainment industry led by Korean artists with the uniqueness of concepts and the quality of music videos as well as humorous variety and reality shows. According to Zhou (2019), people tend to explore Korean pop culture after being hooked by pop music that contains Korean lyrics. In this case, they are starting to be interested to Korean’s styles such as their fashion, expressions, the way they talk and even eating Korean food as they being influenced by Korean idols. On the contrary, as they embracing the way of Korean it affects their behavior on consuming goods. According to Ho (2010), Phan (2014), as much as youngsters embraced the foreign culture such as Korean culture there is a big chance of losing local income and cannot manage to preserve the traditional one in their country (Dinh, 2016. p13-14). In this way, as they continue to adapt to Korean culture it can affect their daily lives.

Undoubtedly, Korean pop music has a huge impact to the tourism of Korea as it helps on attracting tourists but intensely affects idols in terms of promoting, at the same time with its fame and popularity it become more influential despite of its flaws and I really like how Korean government used music to develop and promote their pop culture and through the years they continue creating history on their own style and culture. It is known as one of Korea’s pride for nothing.