“K-pop”:What?-How?-Why?




K-pop is abbreviation of “Korean popular music” in English and is a musical genre that includes various musical styles such as pop, rap, EDM, rock , or R&B , and specifically referring to popular music from South Korea.

Since the late 1990s, the success of K-pop artists has generated unprecedented global interest in Korean music and culture.

A more modern form of the genre emerged with ‘Seo Taiji & Boys’, one of the first K-pop groups formed in 1992. Their experiments with different styles of music "regrouped the Korean music scene".  As a result, the integration of foreign musical genres became a common practice for artists of this genre and was accepted without rejection in many countries.

K-pop entered the Japanese market in the early 21st century and East and Southeast Asia

And spread rapidly among the teenagers and young people.

K-pop has evolved into a "culture that is a fusion of synthesized music, dance and colorful fashionable costumes.

Entertainment agencies in South Korea sometimes offer potential artists a contract at a young age. The trainees spend a lot of time in the day, cohabiting in a regulated environment and learning music, dance, foreign languages and other skills in preparation for their debut.

Such a training system is often criticized by the media, but it is also seen as part of Korea's unique form of education, called early education.

K-pop is a cultural commodity that goes beyond commercial value. It is characterized by the development of a mixed performance culture of the West and the East.

 The values inherent in K-pop that appeal to people from diverse ethnic, national and religious backgrounds around the world are made possible by high-quality production, a highly complete performance culture through long training, and professional ethics and polite and moral social behavior.

In addition, under the influence of internet culture and ‘YouTube’, its scalability has spread faster and wider.

And Korea's karaoke(=’NoraeBang’ in korean) culture also had a great influence.

Born in 'Seo Taiji & Boys', ‘Psy's Gangnam Style’ via YouTube made the existence of K-pop known all over the world and it has finally become a genre of global music and culture in ‘BTS’ and ‘BlackPink’.

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