As K-pop goes global, Koreans fall behind when it comes to consumption

The K in K-pop stands for Korea, but it’s long past the point of only being enjoyed in Korea. As a matter of fact, Korea is not even the country that consumes K-pop the most. According to an analysis of YouTube’s data by the JoongAng Ilbo, an ...

Boy band BTS arrives at the 64th Annual Grammy Awards at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas on April 3, 2022. [AP]

The K in K-pop stands for Korea, but it’s long past the point of only being enjoyed in Korea. As a matter of fact, Korea is not even the country that consumes K-pop the most.

According to an analysis of YouTube’s data by the JoongAng Ilbo, an affiliate of the Korea JoongAng Daily, the country that streamed boy band BTS’s music videos and songs the most over the past year was Japan. BTS-related YouTube content — including official music videos and tracks, lyric videos and fan-made content — accumulated approximately 15.1 billion views between March 2021 and February 2022, 2 billion of which came from Japan.

Although the boy band originates from Korea and all seven members are Korean, only 5 percent of views (768 million) were from Korea.

[BYUN JU-YEON]

BTS is not an outlier. Eight K-pop acts that garnered over 1 billion views on YouTube drew the most viewers from outside of Korea. For girl group Blankpink, the second-most-viewed K-pop artist at 8.59 billion views following BTS, the country with the largest viewership was India, with 820 million views. It was Japan for Twice, ITZY and Seventeen, Mexico for Stray Kids and Korea only for IU and aespa out of the eight acts.

Thanks to the genre’s rise in global popularity, K-pop CD sales have also been soaring. After years of steady increase, K-pop CD sales surpassed 50 million copies for the first time last year.

“Half of the CD sales were from exports,” said head researcher Kim Jin-woo of Korea’s album sales tracker Gaon Chart. “K-pop CDs were exported to 23 nations in 2012, then 88 nations in 2021.”

According to the Korea Customs Service, 270.3 billion won ($222 million) worth of K-pop CDs were exported last year.

[BYUN JU-YEON]

“The globalization of K-pop was no coincidence,” said Choi Bong-hyun, a senior research fellow at the Korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Trade. “BTS didn’t suddenly come out of nowhere. With entertainment firms at its center, K-pop established a cycle of producing ‘music products.’ It encompasses training talented individuals, developing their careers not only as musicians but also television personalities and actors, taking a break and coming back with new music. The well-organized system gave K-pop a competitive edge in the global market.”

“K-pop’s high quality of music and performance is what makes it popular in Japan,” said Mori Mayumi, a former Singapore Bureau Chief of Japan’s Asahi Shimbun, who currently researches Korean pop culture as a fellow of the Korea-Japan Cultural Foundation. “Meanwhile in the U.S., K-pop is seen as something new and refreshing because there’s not that many American singers who can dance in-sync as a group.”

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Other K-pop groups followed the international success paved by BTS. Eight-member boy band Stray Kids topped the Billboard 200 albums chart on March 28 with its latest EP “Oddinary,” becoming the third K-pop act to achieve the feat after BTS and SuperM. “Oddinary” sold 103,000 copies in the United States alone in six days.

Although impressive, the news did not come as a surprise; Stray Kids has been seeing more popularity in North America than in Korea, as seen in its YouTube statistics. The band was the fourth-most-viewed K-pop act with 1.75 billion views following BTS, Blackpink and Twice. Korea was not even among the top 10 countries that watched Stray Kids’ content; it garnered 45.4 million views in Korea but 178 million in Mexico, 146 million in the U.S. and 79.8 million in Brazil.

[BYUN JU-YEON]

Stray Kids’ popularity overseas helped the band record its highest CD sales ever, selling 853,000 copies of “Oddinary” worldwide in a week. More and more K-pop groups have recently been breaking their own sales records. Last month, NCT Dream sold 2 million copies of its second full-length album “Glitch Mode” in preorders alone and another 700,000 copies on the first day of its release.

The same month, Red Velvet sold 440,000 copies of its latest EP “The ReVe Festival 2022 – Feel My Rhythm” in a week, which was more than double the sales for its previous EP “Queendom” (2021) — a notable feat considering that the girl group has been active since 2014.

[BYUN JU-YEON]

“The success of BTS has drawn more K-pop CD buyers overall,” said Sim Se-na, the Public Relations team leader at Korea’s album sales tracker Hanteo Chart. “As music consumption switched to online streaming and downloads, album sales have been on the decline in most countries including the U.S. But we’re seeing that only K-pop fans are buying more and more CDs. Promptly after an album’s release, fans unite determined to set a new sales record for their favorite artist.”

Now, K-pop groups do not have to focus much on gaining domestic popularity. Mnet’s multinational idol audition show “Girls Planet 999,” which aired in the summer of 2021, never surpassed 1 percent in television ratings. Nine-member girl group Kep1er was formed by the show and debuted in January, but was met with little reaction. Its debut track “Wa Da Da” entered Korea’s YouTube Music Chart at No. 73 and never ranked high.

Girl group Kep1er [WAKEONE ENTERTAINMENT, SWING ENTERTAINMENT]

But reactions were very different outside of Korea. On YouTube, videos from or related to “Girls Planet 999” garnered 440 million views. Kep1er’s debut EP “First Impact” sold 206,000 copies in the week of its release in January and set a new record for a K-pop girl group’s debut album sales, proving that popularity in Korea does not necessarily correlate with a group’s overall success.

The case of Kep1er makes more sense when taking into account how it was formed. “Girls Planet 999” featured 99 idol hopefuls, 33 each from Korea, Japan and China. Out of the show’s nine finalists who compose Kep1er, six are Korean, two are Japanese and one is Chinese. Mnet had already been well-known for its numerous K-pop audition programs, but the fact that “Girls Planet 999” was the first to accept votes from outside of Korea was a game changer. This allowed foreign fans to have a say in who made it into the final lineup, thus making them more invested and engaged with the show. Approximately 103 million votes were cast while “Girls Planet 999” aired, 90 percent of which came from overseas according to Mnet.

Kep1er was formed through Mnet's multinational idol audition show “Girls Planet 999” (2021), which featured 99 idol hopefuls: 33 each from Korea, Japan and China. [MNET]

Daniel, a British-Japanese viewer in his 40s, shared with the Korea JoongAng Daily that he came across the show last year through Japan’s video streaming platform ‎Abema TV and became invested in a Japanese contestant named Sakamoto Mashiro. He voted for Sakamoto every day and gathered with fellow supporters online to raise money for advertisements to promote her. Sakamoto finished in eighth place and was able to debut as a member of Kep1er. The direct reflection of what international voters wanted helped unite fans around the world. Daniel said he purchased more than 30 copies of “First Impact” to support the girl group.

Boy band Enhypen is another example of this phenomenon. It was formed through Mnet’s audition program “I-Land” (2020), held in collaboration with entertainment giants CJ ENM and HYBE. The show remained obscure with average ratings of 0.75 percent. Nonetheless, Enhypen’s latest full-length album “Dimension: Dilemma” (2021), which dropped last October, sold 818,000 copies in the first week after its release. On YouTube, countries that view Enhypen-related content the most are the Philippines, followed by Japan, Indonesia, the U.S. and Thailand. Korea ranked just tenth.

Boy band Enhypen [BELIFT LAB]

From the perspective of K-pop agencies, the nationality of fans and buyers does not matter — as long as they actively stream music and buy albums and merchandise. Domestic popularity is no longer their main focus.

A larger, more diverse audience means increased efforts to cater to more diverse tastes. Although there are still successful K-pop acts that only consist of Korean members — notably BTS, Red Velvet, ITZY, Monsta X and Ateez — nowadays it is more difficult to name a group that does not have at least one non-Korean member. The catchy tunes of K-pop songs are a result of numerous Korean and foreign composers coming together to create hits. K-pop agencies commission upcoming songs’ choreography to choreographers all around the world, selecting the best parts to merge together into one elaborate group dance routine that has become a signature of K-pop.

The production process of K-pop idols has now been established as a global and systematic value chain that utilizes all available resources from around the world. One example is BTS’s hit “Life Goes On” (2020) which was the first Korean-lyric song to top the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Behind the song were not only Korean producers, including some BTS members, but also a list of foreign composers including Ruuth, Chris James and Antonina Armato. Major K-pop agency SM Entertainment has been hosting what it calls a "songwriting camp" since 2009, gathering Korean and foreign composers to work together with SM employees on new creations. The agency’s A&R (Artist and Repertoire) department arranges and oversees large-scale collaboration projects. Although each composer may not identify their field of music as “K-pop,” such process integrates multinational talent into the production system unique to K-pop.

Boy band BTS performs during its "Permission To Dance On Stage – Seoul" concert [BIG HIT MUSIC]

For the most part, the K-pop idols as we know them today that first appeared in the 1990s were mostly limited to Korea’s relatively small domestic market. They were also far removed from the world’s mainstream music industry dominated by Western pop, but things have been changing.

“In terms of producing idol acts, it’s clear that Korea dominates in technology,” said music critic Kim Young-dae. “Now, the United States, which has the largest music market in the world, is trying to outsource producing idol acts to Korea.”

K-pop powerhouses SM Entertainment and JYP Entertainment joined forces with American firms and are preparing to host local idol auditions in the U.S. BTS’s agency HYBE is also preparing an audition in the U.S. through its subsidiary Hybe America.

BY CHUN YOUNG-SUN, HALEY YANG [yang.hyunjoo@joongang.co.kr]