The rise of K-pop in the global music industry has been recognized by mass media with abundant coverages about K-pop has become a global phenomenon and sensation from media in every corner of the world. As reference, based on world google search trends, in these past 5 years from the scale 0-100, the search average for the word 'BTS' is 22, compared to the words 'One Direction' with 2 and the words 'Ariana Grande' with 7. It is now well accepted that K-pop industry has taken over the world's music industry. I believe that this recent rise of K-pop is a result of the combination of internal and external factors. Internal factors such as: high-quality casting, rigorous training, universally-appealing production, and global promotion. That supports by the external factors such as: economic and political support from the government and technological advancement. In this paper, I will discuss these in turn and explain why these factors are making K-pop industry going global.
Internal Factors
There is no doubt that the K-pop industry has put in a lot of effort to attract the attention of the global market. In this section, I will analyze the internal strategies used by the K-pop industry that are behind the success of K-pop in the global market.
High-Quality Casting
Among all, K-pop artists are the core function with the highest strategic importance, and are in the key position that entertainment companies need to find the best people in the market. Various ways are used by them to find new faces that have the potential to become artists. These talent scouts usually spread out in various locations, from shopping centers, to roadside locations to find the new talent they want. The acquisition process will find high-quality candidates who show great potential in physical appearance, singing, dancing, and personality to become future K-pop stars. They not only pick the candidates locally, sometimes global auditions are held regularly to recruit diamonds in the rough from various parts of the world. The ultimate goal is to build a diverse talent pool where they can attract the top ones to debut. These are the steps:
Pre-audition training (self-taught singing, dance, acting and others to hone their talents);
Trainee auditions (if someone feels good about their talent, they will audition);
Sign the contract (this signature is an agreement to agree to the contract as a trainee).
An effective recruitment strategy helps K-pop to build a competitive advantage against its competitors. By finding high-quality candidates globally also locally who show great potential in physical appearance, singing, dancing, and personality to become future K-pop stars.
Rigorous Training
First of all, the main aim of this training system is to build a diverse talent pool of ready-made K-pop stars equipped with the right competencies and all the essential skills needed to succeed in the global market. For example, foreign language skills are a must for artists to communicate better with overseas audiences or record songs in foreign languages. Also, K-pop artists must be trained intensively so that they can reach international standards in singing and dancing. In addition, K-pop artists are trained to be knowledgeable, skilled, and capable in various activities and fields.
Types of K-pop agencies on training their artists: Big Hit Entertainment ('Studio is not a bed'), SM Entertainment ('Can't call out'), YG Entertainment ('No need for plastic surgery'), JYP Entertainment ('Strict diet is mandatory'). This shows how much K-pop industry valued training so much. This training program is intentionally designed to be very challenging and competitive to identify high potential talent. Trainees are subjected to long hours of daily training in a tight and busy schedule. Years of training allow the company to continuously monitor and evaluate all trainees and develop deeper strategic insights about the competencies, skills and potential of each of them. Thus, the outcome they got from this rigorous training make them superior in global scale.
Universally-Appealing Production
Talent Production. The K-pop idols are always handsome and beautiful with excellent physique. Even the personality and the behavior of K-pop idols are tactically designed. They are often presented as cute, innocent and humorous but with stronger personalities than the idols from other Asian countries such as their Japanese counterparts. Not only that, they are also sexually appealing but not as provocative and erotic as the American pop stars. They strike a good balance in order to appeal to both the more conservative Asian markets and the more open-minded Western markets. Also, K-pop stars bring a whole new meaning to fashion. Their real-life outfits and styles often far surpass Western stars in intensity and originality. K-pop idols never shy away from making a splash, and have a decidedly unique way of interpreting current trends.
Music Production. A lot of others fangirled and fanboyed over Korean Bands, for such: BTS, Girls Generation, Blackpink, Itzy, Txt, Super Junior, EXO, etc. because of their music genre are a hit and that makes others around the globe want to listen to the music. Many K-pop songs follow a classic song-writing style: an intro and a verse with hooks in the chorus. These ‘hook songs’ emphasize catchiness through devices like repetition. For instance: popular song, ‘Sorry, Sorry’ by Super Junior from 2009, similarly repeats both English and Korean phrases, making it easy to sing along to, even if you don’t know the language. They have different types of music and songs, for example, rap. They mix their language while singing with another language, Korean and English, and sometimes Korean and Mandarin. Combining languages in a song might supports the reason why K-pop is attractive globally.
Dance Production. They make these interesting music videos combine with dancing. They choreographed themselves and that they use their creativity to express themselves. The universal nature of point dances also makes them easy for fans to share as dance challenges on social media. Their explosion on Twitter and TikTok, and even in the game ‘Fortnite’, has helped further expand K-pop’s global reach. In fact, the preview video for BTS’s newest single, ‘Permission to Dance’, was framed as a dance challenge with sign language for ‘dance’.
Therefore, with all these ingredients that integrated in K-pop production, audience does not necessarily need to understand the language to be able to enjoy the production of K-pop. K-pop is an export-oriented entertainment product that is carefully designed and arranged in order to be universally appealing to the global audience.
Global Promotion
There are many unique and smart ways K-pop industry use to promote their products. Here are some of them:
Brilliant teaser strategy. I think this is one of the most effective K-pop marketing strategies, especially if the video is building hype. In other countries like the United States, we've never seen this style of promotion, at least in small doses over a long period of time.
Powerful social media presence. The rise of K-pop in the digital era is certainly very influential on people's buying interest. It can be seen from the use of K-pop artists as brand ambassadors, resulting in high sales of marketed products. The fans also enliven the product through social media so that it can improve the company's reputation and image as well as introduce the product to the general public.
Timing between songs. With so much time, people really start craving the next song. It gives the label enough time to build a hype strategy, and enough time to promote the song before and after release.
Maximizing content delivery, by providing performance videos also dance practice videos.
Release of mini albums. There are a few reasons why labels opt for a mini album instead of a full one: 1) they are cheaper and faster to produce and get to the audience; 2) they earn more money by releasing multiple mini albums instead of a full one; 3) it works as a trial for non-established groups to test out the market; 4) international audience reach; 5) participation in entertainment shows; 6) high quality production; 7) brand deals; 8) TikTok virality.
The point is that this K-pop industry know very well how to promote their product that can reach globally. As we can see the strategy that they use seems totally succeed.
External Factors
Although K-pop capitalize on the audience network to go viral, behind K-pop’s success is a concerted strategy for its exportation. K-pop is an export-oriented business – they want to sell something that is globally appeal. The reasons for K-pop to go global can be attributed to realistic economic and political consideration, that also supports by this new digital era of technology.
Economic and Political Supports from the Government
Before the 1990s, the music industry in South Korea was characterized by a closed market under top-down political censorship. Songs that were considered to threaten national security or causing social discourses of ethics and morality were banned. For example, ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ by the British band ‘Queen’ was banned in South Korea because of the lyrics ‘Mama, just killed a man’. During the presidency of Kim Dae Jung (1998-2003), the Korean government saw export potential in the music industry. Korean government started supporting the growth of its culture and creative industry. Domestic institutions and government policy are a source of comparative advantage in terms of national competitiveness, and government influence can be seen in various aspects. First, the removal of censorship and control opened the Korean music industry up to the world and allowed creativity to grow. Second, financial support and subsidiary systems by the government were established. Third, government regulations against illegal downloads help securing revenue to flow back to the entertainment companies from the customers. Fourth, Korean government also set up responsible bodies to promote Korean soft culture abroad. The Korea Creative Content Agency (KOCCA) was established in 2008. To conclude, the censoring government of earlier decades no longer arbitrates, but rather picked up the role of sponsoring and promoting the activities of Korea’s soft culture entrepreneurs. Favorable government policy is a major source of competitive advantages for K-pop to spread both at home and overseas.
Technological Advancement
Digital and social media have enabled K-pop to have more opportunities to reach the widest possible audience that one cannot imagine decades ago, when the gateway to develop media presence was still largely controlled by radio and television. In the digital era, the importance of mass media has been radically reduced, while the importance of digital and social media has exploded. The rise of digital and social media has few important implications. The rapid growth of social media has allowed a wider range of music to be shared around the globe. Besides, social media also provide a limitless, unmediated space for people to communicate instantly with one another. The success of K-pop to reach globally can be explained by its competence to support its fans’ desire to express themselves through music, hence significantly raise its media presence. This then create the smaller gap between K-pop idol and their fans, thus create the power of the online fan-base in improving media presence of K-pop by their active participation in supporting their favorite artists.
Conclusion
K-pop as global phenomenon is the result of both combination of internal and external factors. The aim of internal factors is to build the quality of K-pop industry to compete globally, and by having the external factors, they can boost their opportunities to appear globally. These factors are working together and cannot be separated because it does supports each other. Without the internal factors, K-pop can't meet the requirement to compete globally. In the other hand, if K-pop industry rely only on the internal factors, and move without external factors, then their chances to go global is not as big as now, and perhaps they might end up in the same level with J-pop, that sells locally, not globally. Therefore, the reason behind the rise of K-pop globally is the combination of the internal and external factors that are working together.