South Korea is well-known for beautiful places, delicious foods and modern technology. However when people talk about South Korea, they will mention about K-pop as well. K-pop is an abbreviation of Korean pop, according from an encyclopedia, K-pop “is a genre of popular music originating in South Korea” (Wikipedia, 2019). Recently, K-pop is rising all over the world, bring another music types into the listeners and receive a huge growth in its music industry. It is reaching to a lot of global audiences but it did not become worldwide by a sudden appear. The ranking on worldwide music chart and also becoming viral on social media are the main reasons for the popularity of K-pop.
The reason explaining why K-pop is popular by looking at the worldwide music chart, especially in the US. According to the article from a website Vox “K-pop in particular has become increasingly visible to global audiences” (Romano, 2018, para.3). This article also indicated that in 2018, K-pop had at least eight songs which charted on the weekly chart for the best 100 songs due to sales, radio play and online streaming in the US, called the Billboard Hot 100 chart (Romano, 2018, para.3). Furthermore, a Billboard reporter stated that in 2018 on the Billboard 200 chart for 200 most popular albums based on sales and streaming activity, there are total 10 K-pop albums were ranked on this chart, which making K-pop a true breakthrough on that year and so on (Kelley, 2019, para.3)
The other reason which make K-pop become global is because it went viral on social media. According to an article from Diggit Magazine asserted that thanks to social media, Korean pop can be able to break the language barrier since the interactive communications are spreading globally everyday and no one can deny that social networks play a major role to make K-pop become well-known (Choi, 2018, para.11 ). Moreover, a Billboard reporter announced that in 2018 is the year when K-pop became a massive presence on social platforms since Twitter, one of the most famous social networking site, witnessed 5,3 billion tweets mentioning about K-pop. (Herman, 2019, para.1)
People on the other side argue that K-pop wave is not that popular, compared to other genres like hip-hop or American pop, K-pop is just a small rocket flies between a huge firework (Buckley, 2018, para.10). This argument is not true. An article from Forbes indicated that the music market of K-pop placed at No.6 in the top 10 of the music marketplaces in the world (Kelly, 2019, para.2). Furthermore, the reporter also stated “It’s clearthat K-pop is making strides in a global market that is more internationally connectedthan everbefore” (Kelley, 2019, para.9).
In conclusion, from the ranking on worldwide music chart and the massive spreading on social media are the two aspects which answer why K-pop is becoming a global phenomenon. Due to these two reasons, K-pop is going to be more and more popular and continuing to be a global influence to many people around the world.
Reference List
- Romano, A. (2018, February 26). How K-pop became a global phenomenon. Vox. Retrieved May 15, 2019, from https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/2/16/16915672/what-is-kpop-history- explained
- Herman, T. (2019, February 21). Twitter records 5.3 billion tweets associated with K-pop in 2018. Billboard. Retrieved May 25, 2019, from https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/k-town/8499533/twitter-5-billion-k-pop- tweets- 2018
- Kelley, C. (2019, April 24). From BTS to Blackpiink: A history of K-pop on the Hot100. Billboard. Retrieved May 25, 2019, from https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/chart-beat/8508577/k-pop-hot-100-history- bts-blackpink
- Choi, J. (2018, November 23). How could K-pop gain fans worldwide. Diggit Magazine. Retrieved May 25, 2019, from https://www.diggitmagazine.com/articles/how-could-k-pop-gain-fans- worldwide
- Buckley, A. (2018, June 21). Can we stop pretending K-pop is popular? Digital Music News. Retrieved May 25, 2010, from https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2018/06/21/stop-pretending-k-pop-popular/
- Kelley, C. (2019, April 3). K-pop is more global than ever, helping South Korean’s music market grow into a ‘power player’. Forbes. Retrieved May 25, 2019, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/caitlinkelley/2019/04/03/kpop-global-bts-blackpink- grow/#968046324e20
