The Impact Of American Culture On K-Pop Idols

Today, we’ll be exploring a musical phenomenon that has taken the world by storm: K-pop, or Korean popular music. Its explosive popularity began in the mid-1990s. However, the development of K-pop into its current form involved decades of history and politics. I’ll only be scraping the surface of the creation of K-pop today, but I hope I’ll be able to help you understand how K-pop came to be.

We’ll begin at the first half of the 1900s, during the period of Japanese rule of the Korean Peninsula. The growth of music under the Japanese occupation meant that traditional Korean culture struggled to develop independently from Japanese influence. By the mid-1930s, Korean popular music began to lean towards a more Japanese style, creating the trot style, with the use of Japanese scales.

Fast-forward to 1945 and Korea was lifted from Japanese rule and subsequently occupied by the American military government. As a result, American popular music was rapidly introduced to Korea, which influenced a more Western style of music to bloom. Many new pop music took influence from Western genres such as mambo or blues. This was the beginning of the age of dance music in Korea. It was also at this time that songs began to incorporated English words or phrases into its lyrics.

In the 1980s, the primary audience of Korean popular music shifted from adults to teens. In addition, colour TV began to emerge. The combination of these two factors meant that there was more emphasis on flashy looks and energetic dance routines, and less emphasis on vocal skills. This influence may be credited to the Japanese idols, whose performances are centred around conveying an atmosphere of enjoyment. Singers who stood out on the TV lead the wave of this new genre of K-pop, such as the trio called Sobangcha.

Most notably, the group that marked the beginning of modern K-pop was Seo Taiji and Boys. They were arguably the first to integrate rap music and the hip-hop genre into South Korean popular music. An excerpt of their debut song, I Know, was played at the beginning of this podcast. K-pop continued to bloom as idol groups began to enter the scene one by one. In particular, companies such as SM Entertainment, DSP Media and YG Entertainment became major forces in the popular music industry and produced many successful groups, such as H.O.T. or Fin.K.L. Interestingly, groups tended to be more successful than soloist in the K-pop industry. This may be contributed by the collectivist culture in Korea where more emphasis is placed on being part of a bigger group rather than standing out as a soloist.

From the 1990s and onwards, many songs performed by idol groups had heavy American influence as songs tend to adapt to whatever Western music style was popular at the time. In fact, many big entertainment companies started to hire Western producers and distributors to create music for them. K-pop music has been fairly constant from the later 2000s, especially due to the Korean government’s promotion of K-pop as a national brand. Kim Changnam voices the irony that “a minimally Korean and principally transnational culture is being treated as a most nationalistic and popular culture”.

Although some worry that the traditional South Korean culture might be lost through the influence by foreign trends and music, Ryoo Woongjae assures that foreign influence “is an inevitable course for all contemporary cultures as well as postcolonial cultures”.