What makes K-Pop so attractive to worldwide audiences? البحث

 Globalized Star-Making System (hal 38)

After winning a fierce competition against numerous other aspiring

stars at an audition, Korean idols generally go through years of training in

singing, dancing, foreign language skills, and fi tness.Even if one gets to

join an entertainment agency as a trainee, there is no guarantee that he or

she will survive the competition against other trainees and sign a contract

with the company. It took an average of more than fi ve years for the nine

members of Girls’ Generation to get where they are now.

SM Entertainment executive director Jeong Chang-hwan said that while

Asian pop music had previously faced excessive barriers to exposure in

the Western world, it broke through in the wake of the social media boom.

“SNS has enabled non-Western music to reach the world in a single click,”

he said. “Asian music has seized that chance.” hal 23

When it comes to population size, no region can beat Asia, which allows

for the largest of hit counts on Internet video clips. So far, Southeast Asia

and China have yet to bring their pop music to a world audience, Jeong

noted, adding that Japan focused only on its local market, the world’s

second largest market of pop music. In contrast, Korea has a very small local

market, which had led Korean entertainers to look outside. “K-Pop used to

be categorized as Asian music, but now it is a global genre,” Jeong said.

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What makes K-Pop

so attractive to worldwide audiences? 

What are the decisive factors that

define K-Pop in its current state, and why is its popularity surging?

The popular weekend program Monocle on the 24-hour Bloomberg TV

network featured a special report on Korea’s music industry and K-Pop

on February 20, 2011. The program addressed three aspects of K-Pop’s

competitiveness. First, it pointed out that K-Pop is a real business with

strong export potential. Second, the program said social media played

a signifi cant role in K-Pop’s success. Third, it noted that K-Pop is not just

music but a combination of audio and visual impacts.