The Rise of K-Pop

Besides the ever-present Korean TV dramas and movies on streaming video services such as Netflix, you will also find that Korean music and music videos gaining in popularity around the world. The emergence of K-Pop (Korean Pop) has been going on for some time now, and was most exemplified by the presence of Psy's Gangnam Style at top of the most-viewed YouTube video ever for quite a long time. It was recently surpassed by two videos and sits at number 3 on the top chart with over 2.9 billion views.¹ It was the first video to hit a billion views and was for some time also the most liked video.²

As a relatively small country, South Korea has done quite a lot to export its culture to other countries. It's been termed as the "Korean Wave" or Hallyu in Korean. The appeal is not just limited to the U.S. as many other countries around the world especially in other parts of Asia have been caught up in the wave. From a Wikipedia list of concerts held outside Asia, you can see a steadily increasing number of concerts and locations since 2010. As far as the U.S. location, you will notice that many of them are on the East and West coasts where there are larger concentrations of Asian American populations, but you can also see Atlanta, Chicago, and Dallas among other common concert destinations. You'll also see a long list of a variety of Korean artists including K-Pop singers for the very large cultural festival South by Southwest held annually in Austin, Texas.

So who are some of the bands leading the charge of the Korean Wave? TVXQ and Girls' Generation are the leading male and female groups respectively in terms of overall album sales according to this list compiled in 2016. As for more recent groups, Twice, a multinational girl group with members from Korea, Japan, and Taiwan is an up-and-coming group that has won a number of major awards recently and has been involved in political news.

To read more about K-Pop's emergence in the U.S. and around the world, check out some of these articles--many from the past year:

• To Anyone: The Rise of Korean Wave
• Can K-pop Conquer America?
• The Rise of K-Pop: From Gangnam Style to "Bigger Than Bieber"
• The Rise of K-Pop in the USA
• Hallyu Tsunami: The Unstoppable (and Terrifying) Rise of K-Pop Fandom
• What is K-pop? South Korean music goes global
• South Korea's Greatest Export: How K-Pop's Rocking the World
• K-Pop's Global Success Didn't Happen by Accident

If you're interested in checking out some local K-Pop concerts, then here's a list of concerts in the U.S. and around the world:

• Wikipedia list
• Kpopconcerts.com list
• Kpop-TV list
• Nutty Nomads list
• Billboard article

Quick facts:

• As of 2012, government statistics showed about $43M worth of music exports from Korea in that year.³
• Korean band EXO's second album was "2015's fifth biggest-selling album in the world" ⁴
• KCON, the largest Korean cultural festival had close to 50,000 attendees in Japan in 2017. ⁵
• KCON USA was held in Newark and is being held in Los Angeles this year. ⁵

If you are not one of the nearly 3 billion views of this video or just want to see it again, then you can see Psy's Gangnam Style video here: