CAPTURING THEIR FAVORITE IDOLS
Through all these changes, Korea continued to transform. Its economy surged and expanded at an amazing rate. The military government came to an end in 1987, and the new constitution that came into being allowed greater freedom of expression and restored democracy. The Seoul Olympics of 1988 were a symbol of how much the country had grown and opened up. And thanks to the growth of the economy and freedom, Korean arts and entertainment were soon recovering.
BTOB IS A YOUNG GROUP BUT IT ALREADY HAS MANY FANS
There was popular music before K-pop, of course. Cho Yong-pil was one of the biggest artists of the 1980s, although he faded in the early 1990s before making a spectacular and totally unexpected comeback in 2013 with “Bounce,” a song that dethroned Psy from the top of the charts. Kim Kwang-suk was an important and influential folk singer, closely associated with the democracy movement. Sinawe was probably the biggest heavy metal group ever, peaking in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Kim Gun-mo was huge for much of the 1990s, although his more jazzy, grown-up pop songs never really fitted the K-pop mold. Shin Seung-hoon was the biggest ballad singer of the early 1990s, back when ballads ruled the charts. But none of these acts were K-pop, at least not the K-pop we would recognize.
The rise of modern K-pop couldn’t be clearer. It began on March 23, 1992, the day that Seo Taiji and the Boys released their first album. Seo Taiji (born Jung Hyun-chul) had dropped out of school at seventeen and briefly played with Sinawe before hooking up with b-boy dancers Yang Hyun-suk and Lee Juno. They formed a hip-hop group heavily influenced by New Jack Swing, but also a jumble of musical ideas, and featured plenty of energetic dance moves. Most older Koreans were confused by this new musical concoction, but young people loved it. “Nan Arayo” (“I Know”) spent most of the year on the top of the charts, starting a music revolution.
Seo Taiji was not the only one dreaming of new musical styles, of course. Another producer trying to figure out the new sounds of a new generation was Soo-Man Lee. Lee had been a popular singer, deejay and television host in the 1970s before leaving Korea to study electrical engineering in California. While he was studying engineering, he was also studying MTV and the biggest trends in American music, and working out how to bring these trends to Korea. Soon after returning home, Lee started SM Entertainment. He tried making stars of several promising young talents but was not quite able to find the magic formula.
MISS A MEETS WITH FANS
CUBE STUDIO
Not until he created H.O.T, that is. With H.O.T—short for “Hi-five Of Teenagers”—Lee combined the energy of new American pop music with a rigorous training system designed to create young stars. Lee realized that stars needed to learn more than just singing and dancing. They needed a whole range of skills, such as humility, attitude, language and the ability to deal with the media. H.O.T exploded on the scene in 1996, selling in huge numbers and whipping young fans into a passionate frenzy. Soon came more bands, such as the girl group S.E.S., Shinhwa and Fly to the Sky.
Lee was not alone. Yang Hyun-suk, one of the members of Seo Taiji and the Boys, started YG Entertainment in 1996. Daesung Enterprise (today’s DSP) had groups like FinKL and Sechs Kies. Park Jin-young launched his solo career in 1994, then started his own music label, JYP Entertainment, in 1997. With each new group, each new producer, K-pop was growing, becoming brighter and better.
It is important to remember that these trends and successes in music were not happening in a bubble. Korean movies, too, were ever more creative and celebrated, setting box office records and winning awards around the world. Musical theater boomed also, and today the live options are almost endless. In the arts, design, fashion and more, young talented Koreans were rewriting the notions of what Korea is and what it could do. And as each field grew, it would influence and fertilize the others, transforming the whole of Korean society.
G.NA
With the turn of the new millennium, K-pop continued to grow. Korea quickly installed one of the world’s best broadband Internet networks, which, while amazing for gaming and transforming day-to-day life in Korea, also meant that the Korean music industry bottomed out. Young people simply stopped buying music. Music stores disappeared. If they were to survive, Korea’s music labels would have to look at other ways of making money. Some pushed their artists into commercials and acting. Others focused more on international sales. Japan, being the world’s second biggest music market, was the obvious target, and SM Entertainment’s BoA was a prime example of doing great there. But many singers increasingly found fame around Asia, thanks in no small part to acting in popular TV dramas. Rain, who starred in the very popular Full House, is a great example of this trend. And China, although still a tiny music market, was growing rapidly, and Korea’s music leaders had their eye on it. This is where the term hallyu came from, coined by Chinese journalists to describe the popularity of Korean artists there. Called hanliu in Chinese and hanryu in Japanese (it’s all the same character, 韓流), hallyu literally means “Korean wave” or “flow,” and soon Korean music was washing over all of Asia.
But the wave didn’t stop there. As with Korean movies and TV shows, its music kept finding new fans. In the old days, you had to convince radio programmers or music television executives to play your music if you wanted people to discover your group. Not in the Internet age. Thanks to YouTube and other online services, fans were able to find anything they wanted and could spread the word. And the word kept spreading. If you are reading this book now, it’s probably because the word spread to you as well.
Today, SM Entertainment, YG Entertainment and JYP Entertainment are commonly called the “big three” music labels (with Cube, which was founded by a former JYP president, often considered a strong fourth). Each has a pretty distinct style of music and way of doing business. SM is easily the biggest company and concentrates on more bubbly, younger pop. Having consistently produced many of the biggest groups in K-pop for nearly two decades, it can be argued that SM is the industry leader and most aware of what the fans want. Except that SM might argue it doesn’t produce K-pop. It produces SM-pop—a style of its very own.
FANS HANGING OUT AT CUBE STUDIO
JYP ENTERTAINMENT
2PM
YG ENTERTAINMENT
JYP Entertainment has a more R&B flavor and is strongly influenced by its founder, JY Park (Park Jin-young). Park is the main songwriter for his company’s groups and the creative force. His mottos of leadership, humility and responsibility hang prominently on the walls of the JYP headquarters. He also has a long history of success, having been a big solo artist himself for many years and having worked with many of Korea’s top stars. JYP used to be home to Rain, one of the biggest K-pop stars of the last decade, and his group Wonder Girls were the first K-pop group to land on the Billboard charts.
YG Entertainment was founded by Yang Hyun-suk after Seo Taiji and the Boys broke up. From the beginning, YG featured hip-hop and favored attitude over the usual K-pop cuteness.