H OW THE W EST WAS W ON : R EFLECTIONS ON THE C ONSUMPTION OF K- POP O VERSEAS Roald Maliangkay The Australian National University Ever since the South Korean (hereafter: Korean) government began to endorse the promotion of Korean pop entertainment for direct profit and to further bolster the nation’s soft power, 1 carefully groomed and tailored music acts have been successfully promoted overseas. Although K-pop, as it became known, is regarded as a form of musical entertainment, the particular appeal of the acts involved is foremost visual. Even though many of the acts are relatively similar in terms of their performance, presentation and physicality, recognizing specific singers on the basis of their music and voice alone is difficult. This is partly because the sound of K-pop acts is indistinctive. The music commonly has a strong R&B flavor considering its melodic contours, vocal quality, and tresillo-based beat, but arrangements differ considerably and include light pre-teen pop and rock ’n’ roll. It regularly involves short rap sequences that have little “attitude”, but sound rushed, as if the fact that the lines do not suit the beat well is unintentional. Voices are clear and pitch-perfect — on recordings — while auto-tune, heavy arrangements and sound effects help support a rich “studio-sound” that would be difficult to reproduce live on stage. Although there are musical differences based on the gender of the acts, overall the sound is very much reminiscent of that of K- pop as a whole as opposed to any K-pop act in particular. Even so, the difference in sound between North American R&B songs and K-pop is disappearing fast, not in the least due to the increased use of English and “attitude” in K-pop performances. Another reason why K-pop acts are a visual phenomenon rather than a musical one is that the English words in the lyrics rarely make sense on their own. Consider, for example, the opening phrases of Exo-K and -M’s recent hit Mama : Careless, careless. Shoot anonymous, anonymous. Heartless, mindless. No one who care about me? Although these lyrics may certainly seem careless and mindless, they are not meaningless and must be considered part of an act that interjects phrases for their sound and symbolic rather than literal meaning, while perhaps also connoting an understanding of Western culture for an audience with a limited knowledge of English. Although the grammar may be wrong, and may be recognized by the audience as wrong, the use of the words implies that the performers, some of whom are native English speakers, are under no pressure to verify their facts. The use of the random English in an opening sequence or chorus is intentional. It breaks with the rules of traditional English grammar and empowers the ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ 1 A nation’s efforts to boost its soft power very rarely precede economic gains. See Roald Maliangkay, “Oberflächliche Eindrücke” [Superficial impressions], Kulturaustausch II (April 2012): 68.
performers, who are regarded as having the final say on the words’ true, symbolic meaning. These performers are expected to be physically attractive, to dance very well and with great synchronicity, and to dress according to the latest fashion. The fact that their movements often seriously impede their singing performance matters little as long as they lip-sync well and meet the visual standard set by the high definition-quality videos of their performance shared online. Another important aspect of the acts is that the stars appear on TV in shows and dramas, so their “true” character can be carefully assessed and scrutinized. Talk show hosts rarely ask the celebrities to sing a full song, but they may ask them, instead, to dance to a little snippet of one of their songs, or sing or dance to that of another act. K-pop has, so much is clear, become an industry for good-looking celebrities who can dance well as opposed to singer-songwriters. Although Psy’s hugely successful song Gangnam Style may be benefiting from its seeming ridicule of K-pop, there is no denying that K-pop has created a new genre of popular music that is increasingly popular with non-Koreans in countries commonly associated with the West. But how can something so relatively foreign win over so many hearts in such a short time, despite the obvious cultural and language differences? In this paper I will attempt to answer that question by isolating the main factors that have respectively driven and ushered in K-pop in the West. There has been a tendency in the past to explain the success of K-pop overseas on the basis of the quality of the Korean products and their management, but local conditions play an equal role. It should be possible to arrange the factors below chronologically, according to the order in which they took effect, but when analysing how they play out in a local context it is impossible to appraise their importance as they converge with a multitude of other factors and conditions. Since chronological categorisation could suggest a grading of importance, I will, instead, group the factors based on their role in the success of K-pop. Driving sales of K-pop 1. Relaxation of censorship. 2. Government support of creative content industries. 3. Economic crisis of 2007. 4. Positively technocratic, democratic image of Korea as a middle-power. 1. Censorship was relaxed, despite some terrible movies… ( Lies , 1999 by Chang S ŏ nu / Yellow Hair , 1999 by Kim Yumin). The rating of Yellow Hair was rejected by the Korean Performing Arts Promotion Committee (KPAPC). Later President of the Korean Film Archives Cho Hee-mun commented that the film contains “scenes that are disgusting and totally unacceptable to our moral standards.” 2 ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ 2 Hwang Jang-jin, “Movie Stirs Debate on Freedom of Speech”, Korea Herald, March 26, 1999. 2 ¡ ¡ ¡
2. Industry-specific intervention by the government has moved away from the use of censorship and market protection towards providing financial and marketing support for content producers. Even so, Korean content remains very heavily monitored and controlled. 3. Due to the economic crisis, Korean dramas could suddenly be offered to foreign broadcasting systems at very competitive prices. In China, Japan and Taiwan, Korean dramas suddenly appeared on TV during prime time, where it lead to some resistance. 4. A fourth factor that could be considered is Korea’s image as a technocratic and democratic middle-power that did not seek to colonize another nation some time in the past century. Although a nation’s image abroad is never singular, and cannot be driven as easily as policymakers seem to believe, Korea’s technological and political achievements cannot be dismissed. In China, consumers may often ridicule Korea’s attempts at claiming historical feats, but many acknowledge that the country is leading in technology and entertainment, in comparison to Chinese or Western products. The possiitive image of Korea overall is likely to encourage young people to explore the broad spectrum of Korean entertainment. Sun Jung writes that in Indonesia many locals told her that one of the key attractions of K-pop lies in its blend of “modern, cool attributes, in large part originating from Western popular culture forms such as American hip-hop and R&B, European electronic music, and pop and visual elements from J-pop”, 3 but I would argue that the attraction lies not so much in any musical qualities, which are, after all, increasingly less distinctive of Korean pop, but in four aspects that are only partially related to music. 1. High quality of K-pop videos on YouTube. SNS allow people to easily share videos, and what distinguishes K-pop videos from, for example, Japanese pop videos, is the very high quality of the first, not only in terms of their pixel density but also in terms of their arrangement, cinematography and choreography. The high density of the videos allows people to enjoy all the visual detail, something only few J-pop videos allow. 2. High quality dance and presentation. Many fans of K-pop acts, and of boy bands and girl groups in particular, enjoy re-creating and embodying the acts. Considering female fans between the ages of 13 and 24 appear to make up the majority of the fans of both the male and female acts, the diversity in the styling of some female acts may be intended not only to help fans identify their idols, and — more importantly — identify with them, but also to show the possibilities of different forms of styling in a diverse range of settings. K-pop videos are like 4-minute catwalk skits that have a strong ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ 3 Sun Jung, “K-pop, Indonesian Fandom, and Social Media.” In “Race and Ethnicity in Fandom,” edited by Robin Anne Reid and Sarah Gatson, special issue, Transformative Works and Cultures (2011), no. 8. 3 ¡ ¡ ¡
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