Reasons for K-Pop Boom!!

Why K-Pop? You might wonder.. Ten years ago, Japanese music was the most sophisticated and popular; however, now things have changed. Along with Korea’s rapid development in technology, trends move extremely fast. Some trends can include fashion, arts, food, and the most famous of all, Korean music, also know as K-Pop.
K-Pop (Korean Pop Music) has been heavily influenced by pop music in the U.S. and partially some Japanese (but not a major one). Korean music industries are small and therefore competitive. Due to such fierce competition, before Korean idols make their debut, they go through a long period of training period. If they are not trained, they cannot survive in the industry. First of all, as I mentioned, the market is extremely competitive and numerous Korean citizens, even the common people, have amazing singing and dancing skills. Therefore, if a singer does not seem professional on stage, the citizens do not embrace them. In order to attract fans and gain popularity, idol stars in Korea must have the talent and the looks.
On the other hand, popular Japanese idols have don't have high quality skills in singing. This is because Japanese people don't consider idols as artists/singers, they consider idols as entertainers. The main role of an idol in Japan is to make people happy and to be on television shows. This perspective is very different from that of Korea, where idols are also expected to perform at the level of an artist and also be a good entertainer.
Another possible reason of the K-Pop boom is the small Korean music market. Along with the fierce competition, Korean idols have to expand their market to Japan and other Asian countries. Although the Korean music industry is full of amazing artists, they all cannot profit from Korea's small music industry. Moreover, since illegal downloading is widely spread in Korea, Korean artists cannot earn much profit by selling albums just in Korea. Therefore, many artists aim for the Japanese music market or the Chinese/Taiwanese markets. In order to succeed in these foreign markets, K-Pop stars must produce high quality music and perform well on stage.
With these reasons being said, K-Pop stars having such a dominant role in the whole Asian music industry is not an unusual result.

The Moving Trend of the Hallyu Boom

Although Japan and Korea are located so closely, Japan and Korea are very different culturally. For example, when Korean and Japanese people eat rice, Korea people use spoons and leave the rice bowl on the table but Japanese people bring their rice bowl close to the face and use the chopsticks to eat the rice. However, they also share similar characteristic such as respecting the elders and some of the words spoken in both languages. Some of the same words include promise, which is 約束 (pronounced as yakusoku) in Japanese and 약속 (pronounced as yaksok) in Korean. Korea and Japan share numerous similarities and differences.
Recently, Korean culture is spreading to Japan once again. In 2002, the first hallyu boom took place in Japan with the famous drama Winter Sonata. Winter Sonata won great popularity among old Japanese women and this was the great hallyu boom of Korea. From then on, several Korean singers and actors/actresses visited and performed in Japan. However, after a few years, the hallyu boom started to diminish.

However, during the few years, many great idol stars in Korea won great popularity and once again made the hallyu boom in Japan. The second hallyu boom started with the increasing popularity of a Korean idol group, T.V.X.Q. They were easily seen on the top five songs in the Japanese Oricon chart and had a concert in Tokyo Dom, which is the biggest concert hall in Japan.


After T.V.X.Q., many other popular idol groups such as Kara and Girl's Generation released albums in Japan and came out on TV shows many times. The significance of this second hallyu boom is that this time, Korean stars are gaining popularity among young teenage girls. Are you wondering why Korean stars became so popular in Japan? I'll explain about the reason of the popularity of Korean stars in my next entry!:)

The "Hallyu" Boom

The word "Hallyu" (한류-韓流) means the "Korean wave", which refers to the influence/boom of Korean pop culture all over the world. Currently, Korean pop music (a.k.a. K-Pop) is dominating the whole Asian music industry. Starting from the closest countries Japan, China, and Taiwan it also reached the southeast Asian countries such as Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, and so on. Korean artists' albums are sold a lot and there are fans all over Asia. Songs by Korean artists are often found within the top 10 songs of the local music charts in other Asian countries and music videos from Korean artists have millions of views on youtube. The views are from people all over the world and Korean idols are more popular than the idols of their own country.
Korea was just known a small country on the east coast of China, but now Korea has become the country with the most influential culture in Asia. China and other countries often rearrange or even copy Korean pop music and their performances. Moreover, Korean dramas, movies, food, and anything related to Korea is gaining great popularity all over the globe. Well.. how did this Hallyu become so popular all around Asia? In my blog, I will talk about the trends of Hallyu, the reasons for such great popularity, and I will introduce some key artists leading the Hallyu wave. Moreover, I will analyze the political and social impacts of Hallyu in East Asia.