The K-Pop Paradox

This week Billboard published an article that got some stans extremely worked up but whose topic should not be shocking to anybody that’s been following my work—“K-Pop Paradox: Why Some Acts Find Global Success But Face a Disconnect Back Home.”

It is a truth rarely acknowledged in English that nobody in Korea is listening to the songs served up to global fans as “K-Pop.”

The article—by Kim Do Heon—seemed to single out Ateez, which got the Atinys furious, but the same sentiment could apply to almost all of the acts currently popular overseas: 

Data from the Korea Culture and Tourism Institute (KCTI) illustrates this disparity. In 2023, K-pop’s overseas revenue reached 1.2377 trillion KRW (approximately $950 million USD), while HYBE reported 63.3% of its earnings from international markets in the first half of 2023. JYP followed with 52.2% and YG at 48.6%. Luminate’s Mapping Out K-pop’s Global Dominance report placed Korea as the fourth largest consumer of K-pop, trailing Japan, the U.S., and Indonesia.

I’d add the caveat that foreign fans also represent a significant fraction of that “domestic” consumption, as well. For example, organized fan clubs (called bars) from mainland China will purchase albums—sometimes hundreds of thousands of albums—that appear as domestic sales. Foreign fans can and do also contribute to digital metrics in Korea, using streaming passes and other tools. It’s impossible as an outsider to fully understand how much of current K-Pop consumption even in Korea is driven by the global fandoms.

While the phenomenon of the disconnect between global and domestic consumption is observed correctly, the thesis of the Billboard article is muddled. 

To better understand this, one must revisit the mid-2010’s, a period when K-pop began its meteoric rise in the U.S., spearheaded by BTS’s success at the Billboard Music Awards and their domination of Western charts.

Yes and no. I agree we need to look at the post-BTS era but I’d actually date it more from late 2017 and not their “domination” of the Western charts (which was always overstated) but by their incredible PR strategy and their company’s meteoric growth on the back of that BTS Optimism Bubble. (Can I interest anyone in some tulip bulbs?)

Back home, K-pop reigned supreme in Korea’s music scene, led by heavyweights like BLACKPINK, TWICE, EXO and SEVENTEEN, while audition programs such as Produce 101 captivated audiences and amplified K-pop’s domestic appeal.

Again, yes and no. K-Pop very much did not reign supreme in this era. If you look back at the Circle (nee Gaon) charts—which I have—this era was somewhat fallow for the genre we know as K-Pop aka idol pop and the popular, active mainstream acts in Korea were groups like Winner and iKon, as well as soloists like Zico (from Block B), IU, and G-Dragon (from BigBang.) Groups like WannaOne and EXO had/have large Korean fandoms but were not really being listened to by the general public by 2018 the way that the public had listened to groups like Girls Generation and BigBang ten years earlier. 

Twice, BlackPink, EXO, and Seventeen have large Korean fandoms but it’s a big stretch to say they lead Korea’s music scene.

Ironically, as K-pop’s global footprint grew, its local presence waned. 

This is very true and, I believe, a result of 1) a tanking in musical quality of the product and 2) attempting to appeal to a blandly amorphous global audience.

The absence of a trusted official chart to represent Korea’s music industry dealt a major blow. Once reliable indicators of popularity, real-time charts on platforms like Melon and Genie fell into disrepute after controversies surrounding chart manipulation and ballot rigging in audition programs. These incidents eroded public trust in K-pop as a genre.

This part made me laugh coming from Billboard, purveyors of a “trusted” official chart that is so easily manipulatable that netizens in Korea joke that it’s easier to chart their favorites in America than in Korea and they aren’t wrong. 

The manipulation of the audition program groups is neither here nor there. Was it a scandal? Yes. Did it affect the overall perception of “K-Pop” in Korea? That’s debatable, especially this idea of “trust” in the genre. What is there to “trust” about pop music aimed at young people? Either the songs bang or they don’t. Either they’re trendy and cool or they’re not. 

One of the dirty demographic secrets of K-Pop is that the fandom is now dominated by older women. Please understand that this isn’t a cheap shot against older women—after all, I’m one myself—but when the music and content are being created to please the ears of millennials and Gen X’ers rather than trend forward Zoomers and Alphas, what you get is essentially 純烈 (Junretsu), except disguised as “youth music.” One reason audiences aren’t tuning in is that the songs aren’t being made for them.

And this isn’t just me talking out of my ass but something I’ve observed first hand and I’m not the only one.

Here’s a Yahoo Japan comment from a Japanese netizen from 2022/4/17: 

最近KPOPアイドルのファンに、40↑いわゆる大人ファンがめちゃくちゃ増えてる気がするのですが何故ですか？私はナムグルを複数推しています。数年前はどこも学生ばかりでしたが、ここ1年ぐらいで大人ファンが凄く増えました。何年か前から推してた学生ファンがそのまま成長して社会人になったなら分かりますが、40代になる年齢のファンはそんなにいなかった気がします。何故でしょうか。BTSのダイナマイトから大人armyが急増してここ1年で各グループに推し変して散らばったのかと思うのですがどうなんでしょう。

“Recently something about K-Pop idol fans, it feels like the number of adult fans over 40 have really increased? I’m a fan of multiple boy groups. A few years ago there were a lot of student-age fans but about a year ago the number of adult fans really increased. I’d understand if the students from years ago had stayed supporting their groups and grown up but there previously weren’t that many fans in their 40s. Why did this happen? I think the adult army who came in after BTS’s “Dynamite” about a year ago scattered and started supporting other groups. Doesn’t it feel like that?”

Yes, Japanese Netizen. Yes, it does.

Back to the article: 

By 2018, the industry shifted its focus from broad audience appeal to catering to core fandoms. Fanbases, in turn drove album sales to record-breaking heights, pushing physical sales to over 116 million units in 2023, a tenfold increase over the past decade. Billboard 200 chart topping acts, which were once a rarity, have now expanded to include a slew of K-pop groups like SuperM, Tomorrow x Together, and NewJeans.

Along with the demographic switch, here’s the other key point correctly identified by our author. While fans were always a big part of K-Pop, the switch from making broadly appealing songs that people want to listen to to making songs that stans can stream has done more to diminish K-Pop’s actual, real cultural impact than anything else. If you look at which groups from recent years have a presence with the Korean public, for boy groups, it’s acts like Winner (who had a strong college age audience, male and female) or, recently, rock group idols Day6 have been having a moment. Girl groups like Ive and, yes, NewJeans, had also been doing well by making songs people want to listen to. By and large, the overlap with this music and the stuff that is popular with global fans, is fairly minimal. 

So, while the article correctly identifies the phenomenon—focus from broad audiences to core fandoms; core fandoms are driving sales—lumping in girl group NewJeans, who were targeting a non-core fandom audience, with the boy groups listed is wrong. Even SuperM and Tomorrow x Together represent two different phenomena. What SuperM did was reactivate the second/third generation global fans to try to on-board them to the newer generation groups. I attended a SuperM concert in late 2019 and that is who I saw—a mix of older stans (as in had been around a long time, like me), Korean-American community members, and some younger NCT-zens. Tomorrow x Together is the one group listed that is correctly identified as part of this new trend in the industry where the target core fandom is the only audience.

Meanwhile, K-pop’s evolution into a fandom centric business model has redefined its strategy. Entertainment companies prioritize retaining and strengthening existing fanbases over attracting casual listeners and songs are designed to reinforce a group’s identity rather than to appeal to the masses. 

This is true, yes.

In Korea, K-pop activities increasingly resemble fan service. Despite low domestic ratings, programs like Music Bank, M Countdown, and Inkigayo remain important platforms for launching new songs and generating live performance clips for social media platforms such as YouTube. This demonstrates that while K-pop may no longer be music for everyone, its transformation into a niche-driven, global phenomenon is undeniable.

100% yes, this is very true. These music shows used to be more like Japan’s Music Station where a variety of popular domestic acts were showcased. Now, they are content mills for idol music where the point is generating YouTube clips that global fans will watch.

However, not all groups face this disconnect. Acts like aspea, IVE, SEVENTEEN and NewJeans continue to dominate Korean media and achieve commercial success domestically. Across the board, K-pop’s overall revenues keep climbing, driven largely by its international market.

SEVENTEEN may be doing well with name recognition and variety but musically they are not a presence the way the other listed groups are. I think this also comes down to boy groups and girls groups being very different in terms of fandoms, which is something the author does not address.

As K-pop increasingly focuses on global markets, can it find a balance between domestic recognition and international acclaim? Will it achieve a universal appeal similar to Latin music, fostering sustainable support both at home and abroad? The dual identity of K-pop, its paradoxical success offers both challenges and opportunities for the industry’s future. 

There’s so much going on here in this last little piece. “International acclaim” meaning charts and sales? What creates universal appeal? 

Spotify recently released a 2024 K-Pop “Global Impact List” that is by and large a list of songs that had no impact anywhere other than stan-driven metrics. The number one song is “Who” by Jimin, which is a prime example of completely fan-driven K-Pop. Jimin has a large and dedicated fanbase who have worked tirelessly to ensure that he’s remained on these types of lists. His presence at number one doesn’t speak to broad public recognition but to the power and organization of this fandom.

But then at number two is Rose and Bruno Mars with “APT,” a song that even my nieces know because it’s become a playground hit.

Apples and oranges; the two paths K-Pop is straddling.

The timing of this Billboard article with G-Dragon’s Übermensch just serves to highlight how disconnected the current global K-Pop fandom really is.

G-Dragon is undeniably a massive celebrity in Korea. His pre-release song “Home Sweet Home” sat at the top of the popular MelOn streaming service chart for weeks; his recent style choices have become popular memes; and a choreography error in a performance of “Home Sweet Home” has taken on a life of its own. Yet, the broader global K-Pop fandom seems baffled by this focus on him when he doesn’t hit the metrics that they’ve been trained to see as meaningful—like Spotify.

If “K-Pop” is now defined by this globalized core fandom-driven model, is G-Dragon no longer “K-Pop” but, rather, a popular Korean artist?

To me, the disconnect feels even bigger than “global” and “Korean” but more between “navel gazing fandom driven” and “songs people want to listen to” and I don’t think K-Pop can survive in any meaningful way as a completely fandom-driven phenomenon.