“What can they do? They began to ride this horse, and so they're almost stuck with it now, and they invested so much prestige about South Korean in K-pop,” says Lee. And that could post a dilemma for the government. With that change and the emergence of some serious scandals, the worry is that it could tarnish brand Korea. “It's really accelerated in the last couple of decades, and K-pop is part of the process of the massive change in South Korean society,” says Lee. It's resulted, he believes, in a cultural amnesia to traditional Korean society. So, it’s something that's really changing South Korea, and not always for better, I'm afraid.” “The vast majority, I think, of young South Koreans get some form of intervention either in your face or your body. “For example, cosmetics and plastic surgery and other elements of the beauty industry really rely on K-pop, especially to promote this image that if you use these South Korean products and service that you will become attractive, cool, great looking just like these K-pop stars,” says Lee. There was a high-profile suicide in 2017: Jonghyun, lead singer of one of the biggest groups SHINee, took his own life at the age of 27, and a note believed to have been sent by him to a friend spoke of his struggles with depression and fame. Over the past few years, there's been an increase in K-pop stars admitting to having mental health issues. “So, you run yourself ragged to make sure that you're getting every penny out of it.” “Right behind you, there is a group of hungrier, more ambitious, younger kids that's looking to dethrone you as the next big thing,” says Waite. Once you drop that first single and have your first performance, the clock is then ticking down again, she says, to when you become irrelevant. Waits says sometimes the trainees are existing on up to two hours' sleep a night. And when they do, they can have even earlier starts. In Seoul, the trains shut down at midnight, so they get on that last train, they go home, sleep for five hours and do it again.”īear in mind, these budding stars haven't even debuted yet. “Then they go to school until about 3pm, head back to the entertainment company where they do more lessons until about 11pm. You sort of have a personalised schedule based on what your role in the group is,” says Waite. You train for a bit, whether that's choreography classes, vocal lessons. The recruits either stay at home or live in dorms. All K-pop bands come through this system. There are other smaller ones out there too.
There are three main agencies with up to 200 trainees each. There is, says Waite, a specific formula and a set of conditions for creating a K-pop star. The first day the site went live in 2014, it crashed. So, she started her own website called Moon-ROK, giving information on K-pop news and entertainment. When Waite started looking, she couldn't find anything in English online. It's going to be like the Macarena’, you know where it's like a one hit and then it's done, and it just sort of goes away and remains regional.” “I remember when I first started researching this whole phenomenon, people were like, ‘This is a flash in the pan. Everything was just so overwhelming,” says Waite. “I came across a K-pop video that someone else posted and was blown away by the production value of it, the colours, the sounds. In the early hours of that morning, she stumbled across it. If K-pop is like a popular selling product, then how is it put together? Hannah Waite was at college in America looking for a subject to research. “K-pop is a product not just made for Korea or made in Korea, but made by Korea,” says Cho. Today, Korean music producers are experts at manufacturing incredibly successful products.
Just one of the official videos of Gangnam Style on YouTube had well over three billion views, the largest number of hits of any video at that time. The power of the music video transcended language. It showed that you could be big and not sing entirely in English or be in vogue.
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