Between Cultural Hybridization and Appropriation: The Meaning of 'K' in K-Pop

11 Feb 202211am—12.30pm

K-Pop began as a part of Korean local popular music in the late 1990s, but has become a global popular music genre firstly in East Asia since the early 2000s then even outside East Asia since the early 2010s. Especially, after the big success BTS and other bands in the late 2010s K-Pop is considered one of the hottest rising musical genres in the world. In the beginning when K-Pop was developed as a specific musical genre in Korea, it mostly referred to US and Japanese popular music both musically and industrially. Musically, K-Pop referred to R&B, Hip Hop and electronic dance music from US and enka and J-Pop from Japan.

Industrially, the unique business model of K-Pop usually called 'agency-idol system' supported by 'total management strategy' was highly influenced by the star system of Hollywood movie studios in the early 20C and the factory processing of Motown in the 1960s as well as by Japanese idol industry in the 1980s and 1990s. It means K-Pop is basically a result of cultural hybridization between local and global. Recently, K-Pop is accepting other cultures as well as human resources from different parts of the world, which makes its hybridity deeper and more significant.

International players including musicians, composers and producers are now essential parts of K-Pop and industrial collaboration between Korea and other countries is increasing. Also, other countries are using K-Pop as their reference to create their own music. However, in this procedure, sometimes unexpected conflicts happen including cultural appropriation and nationalism controversies. It shows the ambivalent aspect of K-Pop that it is becoming more and more dependent upon global popular music scene but still cannot be separated from its locality as being Korean.