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DIVERSITY OF K-POP: A FOCUS ON RACE, LANGUAGE, AND MUSICAL GENRE

Wonseok

A Thesis

Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

August 2018

Committee:

Jeremy Wallach, Advisor

Esther Clinton

Kristen Rudisill

© 2018

Wonseok Lee

All Rights Reserved iii ABSTRACT

Jeremy Wallach, Advisor

Since the end of the 1990s, Korean , known as Hallyu, has spread to the world. As the most significant part of Hallyu, Korean popular , K-pop, captivates global audiences. From a typical K-pop artist, , to a recent sensation of global , BTS,

K-pop enthusiasts all around the world prove that K-pop is an ongoing global cultural flow.

Despite the fact that the term K-pop explicitly indicates a certain ethnicity and language, as K- pop expanded and became influential to the world, it developed distinct features that did not exist in it before.

This thesis examines these distinct features of K-pop focusing on race, language, and musical genre: it reveals how K-pop groups today consist of non-Korean , what makes

K-pop groups consisting of all Korean musicians sing in non-Korean languages, what kind of diverse musical genres exists in the K-pop field with two case studies, and what these features mean in terms of the discourse of K-pop today.

By looking at the diversity of K-pop, emphasize that K-pop is not merely a - oriented musical genre sung by in the . I argue that K-pop is not confined to a certain , ethnicity, or language. In the era, it exists as a global cultural flow amalgamating diverse races, languages, and musical genres. My thesis thus demonstrates how diverse races, languages, and musical genres are interwoven in the K-pop field. iv

Dedicated with love and appreciation to Jiyoun. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

First and foremost, I am immensely grateful to my advisor, Dr. Jeremy Wallach, for all his guidance, encouragement, and valuable comments through this entire project. He inspires me to pursue the field of and cultural studies further. My special thanks goes to my other committee members, Dr. Esther Clinton and Dr. Kristen Rudisill, for their insightful comments. I do not think I could have completed this project without their support and encouragement during the last two years.

I also want to thank the rest of the faculty in the Department of Popular Culture at

Bowling Green State University for their support, as well as Dr. Katherine Meizel and Dr. Sidra

Lawrence in the College of Musical Arts for their expertise in ethnomusicology. I was very fortunate that I was able to take their classes. Their classes were extremely useful and I am grateful for the time and energy they gave to me. In addition, I would like to thank my colleagues. Specifically, I want to thank of my colleagues, Jason Maageria, from Kenya. He and I pushed each other to concentrate on each project. Meeting with him regularly was very helpful for this thesis. And I must express my special appreciation to all the musicians, informants, and interviewees for this project.

Finally, I would like to thank my family and for their support, understanding, and patience throughout the whole process of this project. Specifically, I am extremely grateful to

Jiyoun for her constant love and support. This project could not have been accomplished without her. I am truly indebted to her. vi

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

INTRODUCTION ...... 1

Methodology ...... 6

Chapter Previews ...... 7

CHAPTER ONE: THE DEVELOPMENTAL PROCESS OF K-POP ...... 11

The Appearance of Taiji ...... 12

Influences of the Trainee System on K-pop ...... 19

The Involvement of the Korean government ...... 28

CHAPTER TWO: RACE AND LANGUAGE ...... 35

K-pop Sung by Koreans but in Non-Korean Languages ...... 35

Lyric Translations ...... 37

Lyric Translations ...... 44

K-pop Songs Sung by non-Koreans but in Korean ...... 47

CHAPTER THREE: JAMBINAI AND 2ND MOON ...... 62

Jambinai As Another K-pop ...... 68

Musical Features of Jambinai ...... 70

2nd Moon ...... 76

The Gugak Project ...... 78

CONCLUSION ...... 88

REFERENCES ...... 93 vii

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure Page

1 and Boys’ first debut (Bando, BDL-0023, 1992) ...... 13

2 SM ’s Global Audition Official Web Page in 2017 ...... 24

3 Poster of :CON 2016 ...... 32

4 Single Chart on Feb 19, 2018 ...... 44

5 Comparison Reid’s original curly hair with her hair during “Star a Fire” ...... 53

6 The riff of “They Keep Silence” ...... 70

7 Metric modulation part of “They Keep Silence” ...... 71

8 The geomungo riff and pattern of “Time of Extinction” ...... 71

9 4/4 time signature part of “Time of Extinction” ...... 72

10 A vocal and in a verse of “They Keep Silence” ...... 72

11 Comparison of traditional geomungo player with Shim -yong of Jambinai ...... 73

12 Comparison of traditional haegeum player with Bo-mi of Jambinai ...... 74

13 A performance with 2nd Moon at Jeongdong theater in in 2014 ...... 79

14 The comping in the introduction of “Sarang-ga” ...... 82

15 A combination of Chunhyang-ga melody (upper) and 2nd Moon’s melody (bottom)

in the last part of “Sarang-ga” ...... 83

16 A melody in a verse of “Eosa Chooldoo” ...... 85

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LIST OF TABLES

Table Page

1 The distribution of theme of popular songs from 1984 to 1994 ...... 17

2 Assessment items of KOCCA for the popular music album production 2018 .... 33

3 Comparison between and music consumers ...... 43

4 20 K-pop groups having non-Korean members ...... 48

5 Nationality and ethnicity of non-Korean members ...... 49

1

INTRODUCTION

After I finished my military service in spring 2006, I worked as a session with famous popular musicians in South Korea (hereafter Korea). I performed with them in , festivals, and music TV programs in Korea as well as other Asian countries. Specifically, when

Sg Wannabe, a male vocal trio, and Lee Min-, a member of the group , were on tours in , I was able to perform with them in many cities in Korea, , and Japan.

While participating in the concert tours, I was impressed by the enthusiasm of fans of Korean popular music in other countries. Not only did they enjoy the concerts by along, some fans awaited their stars in front of their hotels. One day in Japan, I asked Japanese fans what made them become fans of Korean popular musicians and music. They told me that they loved

Sg Wannabe and their music because there were no such vocal groups in Japan. They especially emphasized that the three members of Sg Wannabe were so attractive and good at singing. One was very proud of the fact that she started to learn Korean in order to fully understand Sg

Wannabe’s songs.

Since the early 2000s, many Korean popular musicians have promoted their music to other countries taking advantage of Hallyu, which is the term referring to the transnational appeal of Korean popular cultural products, especially in Asia at that time. According to Lee

(2015), “The term Hallyu was first coined by Chinese media in 1998 to describe Chinese youths’ sudden craze for Korean popular-culture products. Hallyu floated to the other side of Asia as well” (p. 6). By pointing out Hallyu’s fuzzy boundary, a scholar, -bong (2015), defines “Hallyu as the phenomenal success of Korean cultures in overseas markets including , TV dramas, music, foods, language, , tourism, beauty products, and the like” (p.

33). Among these elements, Korean popular music (hereafter K-pop) is the most influential part

2 of Hallyu in conjunction with , according to Choi (2015, p. 34). In Korea, from my experience, it was not difficult to encounter fans of and K-pop from other countries, including China, , and Japan, in crowded districts such as Gangnam and Myeong-dong in around the beginning of the 2000s.

Moreover, by emphasizing the importance of cultural content for the national economy, the Korean government actively promotes Hallyu to the world. For example, the Korea Tourism

Organization (KTO) in 2005 created travel programs based on soap operas such as Dae

Geum to attract global tourists (Jang, 2005). In 2008, the Korean government launched the

“Global Hansik” (Global ) campaign to make Korean food one of the most popular ethnic foods in the world (Na, 2009). In addition, the Korean government established agencies such as the for International Culture Exchange (KOFICE) to promote

Hallyu and conduct surveys. When it comes to KOFICE, Fuhr (2017) states that:

Its main consists of overseas market research and surveys, giving

policy recommendations for promotion, organizing forums and seminars

for cultural industry workers and experts from Asia, and (co-) hosting

events, such as the Asia Festival [from 2003 to present], and exchange events with

diverse Asian countries, such as the Pattaya International Music Festival in ,

which presents K-pop next to other Asian pop idols. (p. 144)

In this way, Hallyu has been supported for a long time by the Korean government not only as a significant resource for the national economy, but also as a tool for promoting the national image of Korea globally.

In conjunction with governmental subsidy, the technological development of also contributes to Hallyu’s expansion. Specifically, K-pop as the most significant part of

3

Hallyu gradually spread not only to Asian countries, but also to American and European countries in conjunction with fans’ involvement through social media. Choe and Russell (2012) point out that “YouTube, Facebook and make it easier for K-pop bands to reach a wider audience in the West, and those fans are turning to the same social networking tools to proclaim their devotion” (New Times). When it comes to the global success of Psy’s “Gangnam

Style,” no one, not even Psy himself, can explain this tremendous success except by the influence of YouTube. A number of global fans celebrated “” by copying Psy’s horse dance and uploading it on YouTube, even though they might not understand the .

When Psy’s “Gangnam Style” was booming in 2012, some people were skeptical and argued that the international K-pop sensation would just be a transient phenomenon. However, after 6 years, there are many examples that show K-pop is still appealing to the world.

For instance, there is an annual K-pop fan convention today in the U.S., called KCONs.

According to Euny Hong (2016), tickets for KCONs sold out quickly, and more than 50,000 people attend KCONs annually. In addition, Billboard has had a K-pop column since 2013 in order to bring K-pop news, songs, and music to its readers each week (Bae, 2013). A prominent K-pop boy group, BTS (Bangtan Sonyeondan, “Bulletproof Boy Scouts” in English), not only won “Top Social Artist” at the 2017 , but also performed their song “DNA” at the in 2017 — BTS was rebranded into English to mean “Beyond The ” in 2017 (Marshall, 2017). Along with these examples, it is clear that

K-pop is an ongoing global cultural phenomenon. As K-pop became influential to the world in this way, I noticed distinctive features that did not exist in it before.

I had long encountered global fans of K-pop; I encountered global applicants dreaming of becoming K-pop artists beginning in the . For example, when I worked for

4 from 2009 to 2011, equivalent to in the U.S., I met several global applicants mainly from other Asian countries and the USA. Even though the majority of contestants from other countries are Asians and , I met several Caucasian contestants, too. As a member of the house of Superstar K, I watched applicants from the beginning of the show to the final round. Despite the fact that applicants from other countries were not good at speaking in Korean (some of them did not speak Korean at all), they eagerly tried to sing in Korean in order to get through the mission in this program. In addition, when I worked for Chungchun

Music Inc. as a producer, I received a plethora of applications from other countries including

Bangladesh, China, Japan, USA, and . From what I remember, they normally covered K- groups’ . Although many of them were not good enough at it, they were very enthusiastic; some of them applied again and again heedless of their failure.

Around that time, I was told by a friend, Kim Hye-jung who worked for SM

Entertainment (one of the biggest K-pop entertainment companies) and now works for Jellyfish

Entertainment, that many K-pop agencies have trainees from other countries and teach them not only musical lessons, but also Korean language in order to make them K-pop artists. I also personally taught Brad Moore, a member of the band BuskerBusker from Cincinnati, Ohio, how to advance his drum skills.

It was the opposite phenomenon in the K-pop field at the beginning of the 2000s. At that time, many K-pop musicians and agencies, as I mentioned, merely tried to promote their in other countries. In order to promote their music, musicians learned and sang in foreign languages. For instance, one of my friends, a member of the K-pop izi, was taught

Chinese and Japanese to promote his music to China and Japan around 2003. members of izi even stayed in Japan to learn and culture before their debut in Japan. At

5 that time, although I had met many enthusiastic global fans in person or through social media, I had hardly met any non-Korean aspirants dreaming of becoming K-pop stars. It was taken for granted that K-pop was a presented by “Korean” musicians irrespective of the fact that they promoted their music to other countries.

Around ten years later, I witnessed a number of enthusiastic applicants from other countries aspiring to become K-pop stars who were willing to learn Korean culture and language.

I also witnessed K-pop agencies completely embracing talented non-Koreans as K-pop artists. At present, it is not rare to meet non-Korean musicians singing in the Korean language in the K-pop field. Furthermore, K-pop agencies and musicians still release songs in non-Korean languages as a promotional tool aimed at the global music market. Among the five dimensions of global cultural flows Appadurai mentioned, ethnoscape is an appropriate term that can exemplify this phenomenon in the K-pop field. He (1996) states that “[I]t is to say that the of these stabilities is everywhere shot through with the woof of human motion, as more persons and groups deal with the realities of having to move or the fantasies of wanting to move” (p. 33-34).

Again, it is not rare to encounter “K”-pop songs sung by non-Korean musicians in the Korean language, or “K”-pop songs sung by Korean musicians in non-Korean languages.

When it comes to music genre, even though K-pop has been considered dance-oriented music, diverse styles of music including indie bands have recently captured people’s attention on the K-pop field today. In this way, K-pop has become a cultural area in which many aspects including diverse races, languages, and musical genres are interwoven.

Although many academic research articles and books examine K-pop, they mainly discuss instances of global success rather than the diversity of K-pop, based on the assumption that K-pop is dance-oriented popular music sung by Koreans in the Korean language. Though a

6 recent book, Globalization and Popular Music in South Korea written by Michael Fuhr in 2017, deals with race, it merely covers and Asians. I, however, argue that such an assumption is not enough to fully explain K-pop today. Through this thesis, I delve into the diversity of K-pop, focusing on issues of race (non-Asian and non-Korean American), languages, and musical genres in order to contribute to the discourse on K-pop. By looking at the diversity of K-pop, I emphasize that K-pop is not merely a dance-oriented musical genre sung by Koreans in the Korean language.

Methodology

I utilize an interdisciplinary approach in this thesis, consisting of popular culture studies, ethnomusicology, data analysis, textual analysis, and musical analysis. Although the methodology I use changes somewhat in accordance with the needs of individual chapters, based on what I have experienced in the K-pop field, I mainly rely on the ethnomusicological methods throughout. As an insider, I describe my experiences in order to clarify how K-pop shifted and diversified in terms of race, language, and musical genre. Specifically, I illustrate my experiences and thoughts when I performed with 2nd Moon, which is one of my subjects in

Chapter Three. As an outsider who scrutinizes popular culture, I also conducted interviews with musicians and audiences in order to gather precise data; the most successful examples of this approach can be found in Chapters Two and Three.

Aside from the ethnomusicological methods based on my experience, I draw from various types of sources to this research: 1) sources, including videos and sound recordings, popular press articles, and institutional documents; 2) secondary sources, scholarly articles, including articles published in Korean; and 3) sources including social media. I also utilize musical transcriptions when I scrutinize musical aspects of my two subjects, Jambinai

7 and 2nd Moon, in Chapter Three. In order to emphasize their musical differences, I transcribe certain parts of their music focusing on melodic phrases, chord progressions, and rhythmic patterns. After finishing my transcriptions, I checked them with members of Jambinai and 2nd

Moon.

Chapter Previews

Chapter 1 examines how K-pop has developed from the early 1990s to the present in order to help understand K-pop today. Specifically, this chapter focuses on 1) a monumental shift derived from the appearance of Seo Taiji in the beginning of the 1990s, 2) distinctive features of the K-pop industry, and 3) the Korean government’s official support. These aspects are crucial to grasp how K-pop developed and created an environment which enabled diversity to emerge in the K-pop field today. To be specific, the appearance of Seo Taiji is meaningful in that he not only introduced various music genres, including rap music, into the K-pop field, but also influenced the change in popular music consumers to youth audiences. By analyzing his traits and influences, I describe how he provided a tremendous shift in the K-pop field as well as

Korean society. Relying on Adorno and Horkheimer’s thesis, I also delve into the trainee system for the reasons why and how K-pop artists are manufactured. I explore how the trainee system contributes to the diversity of K-pop by embracing non-Korean musicians. As much as K-pop has become an influential cultural flow, the Korean government has recently tried to intervene in the K-pop industry. This intervention not only affects K-pop artists and agencies per se, but also causes a certain phenomenon, 7th year jinx. In this way, K-pop today can be interpreted precisely through these three aspects: for example, why the majority of K-pop groups today are manufactured and dance-oriented groups.

8

Chapter 2 looks at diverse languages and races in the K-pop field. People today can encounter many K-pop songs sung in non-Korean languages. In conjunction with a description of

Korean society in the beginning of the 1990s, this chapter examines how K-pop songs use non-

Korean languages. This chapter also delves into features of the K-pop industry to provide the reason why many K-pop groups today sing in non-Korean languages. Such a phenomenon provokes not only the globalization of K-pop as a gateway for global audiences, but also the diversity of K-pop. It has become a norm; Korean trainees try to master at least one foreign language before their debuts. In addition, this chapter investigates K-pop groups having or consisting entirely of non-Koreans from Western countries but singing in the Korean language, focusing on three instances: RaNia, CoCo , and EXP Edition. By looking at how they become K-pop artists and what different features they have from typical K-pop musicians, it examines what cultural meaning non-Korean musicians have in the K-pop field as well as in

Korean society. Having non-Korea musicians and languages in the K-pop field might cause questions about the definition issue of K-pop because of the fact that the term, K-pop, clearly represents a certain ethnicity and language. In order to clarify how it impacts the definition of K- pop, I also conducted interviews with international students at Bowling Green State University.

Focused on musical analysis and my ethnographic approach, Chapter 3 explores the musical diversity of K-pop, focusing on two groups, Jambinai and 2nd Moon. In order to bolster my argument that they are K-pop group, I describe why the term, K-pop, is inauthentic and examine what kinds of activities both groups do as popular music artists based on Peter Manuel’s

[1988] definition of popular music. By analyzing their distinct features, this chapter provides not only the reason why K-pop cannot be interpreted as only dance-oriented music groups, but also evidence of how diverse musical genres exist in the broader K-pop field. Specifically, this

9 chapter investigates four songs as examples of the diverse style of K-; “They Keep

Silence,” “Time of Extinction” by Jambinai and “Sarang-ga” (“Love Song”), “Eosa Chooldoo”

(“Here comes the Royal Inspector”) by 2nd Moon. I rely upon global audiences’ comments regarding these songs to describe how people absorb different styles of Korean popular music and emphasize my argument about the musical diversity of K-pop.

The diverse races and languages in the K-pop field mean that K-pop is not only an example of cultural globalization, but also a cultural area within which borders have been diluted. I focus on the diversity of K-pop is not only to suggest different perspectives toward K- pop, but also to look at how people interpret changed K-pop today. While K-pop has been consumed by global audiences as merely a popular music genre from a small East Asian country,

K-pop holds different meanings to each audience. To them, it becomes a cultural area where their political, historical, and social interests are mixed.

For example, a Taiwanese member of , Chou , apologized for waving a

Taiwanese flag on the Korean TV program My Little in 2015. During her segment in this program, she waved a small Taiwanese flag alongside a Korean flag. After a male China- based Taiwanese celebrity, An, castigated Chou as a traitor by pointing out that her behavior was against the One-China Policy — considers Taiwan a Chinese province awaiting reunification with () — backlash from Chou’s actions intensified with both Chinese media and netizens denouncing a 16-year-old Taiwanese K-pop artist. Even some Chinese audiences commenced the “ JYP” movement and it impacted other JYP artists’ promotion in China. Eventually, Chou’s management, JYP Entertainment, released an apology . By comparing this video to a hostage video by ISIS, the Taiwanese criticized JYP for forcing Chou to make the video (Denyer and ). This incident turned out to be a huge

10 political controversy between mainland China and Taiwan. It even affected the presidential election in Taiwan in 2016. According to Chung (2016), “Some election experts later said that the apology video prompted many voters — who at first did not intend to vote — to cast their ballots for Tsaii Ing-wen and her pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party” (South China

Morning Post). This is a clear demonstration that K-pop is no longer a popular music confined to

Korea, but a transnational popular culture that influences people around the world. In order to understand such phenomena, it is necessary to look at the diversity of K-pop. Through three chapters, this thesis scrutinizes how the diversity of K-pop emerges and the kind of diversity that exists in the K-pop field today.

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CHAPTER ONE: THE DEVELOPMENTAL PROCESS OF K-POP

This chapter sheds light on the developmental processes of K-pop from the early 1990s to the middle of the 2010s. In this chapter, I examine how regional popular music becomes global by focusing on three aspects; a monumental shift, a distinct feature of the K-pop industry, and the Korean government’s official support. When it comes to the discourse of the development of

K-pop today, it would be impossible to ignore these three aspects. In the time between the

Japanese era (1910-1945) and the military dictatorship era (1961-1993), popular music in Korea changed in conjunction with the Korean society. To be specific, a popular , including mass product systems and broadcasting stations, were formed during the

Japanese occupation era (Son, p. 265). After Korea was liberated from Japan’s colonial rule in

1945, Korean popular music absorbed diverse American music genres such as rock, and , and , while the U.S. Army stayed in Korea. During the military dictatorship era, people, specifically youths and college students, demonstrated against the autocracy by singing folk songs in the style of and the early . In this way, became a central music genre in the popular music field in Korea during that time. The most revolutionary shift of popular music in Korea occurred in the beginning of the 1990s.

As in many other countries, the globalization of American culture in the 1990s affected popular culture in Korea. There was, specifically, a social group that did not hesitate to consume

Western culture. In conjunction with rising economic affluence since the , the new generation (sinsedae), which had fundamentally different values, lifestyles, and mind-set from the older generation (kisongsedae), actively consumed Western popular culture. According to

Eun-young Jung (2017), “sinsedae in a narrow sense refers to those born during the early and mid-1970s who grew up in urban areas watching American TV shows, listening to American

12 popular music, eating American fast food, and consuming American fashion” (p. 144). One of their different features is a pervasive individualism. Unlike the older generation, who have a social consensus attitude to democratization and industrialization, the new generation (sinsedae) does not share an experience of political conflicts and economic difficulties, owing to the fact that the military dictatorship ended in 1993 and the average rate of in the 1980s was around 10% (Lee, 2016, p. 5). In this way, individualism was pervasive among sinsedae rather than the Confucian of family and community. They relished the consumption of

Western culture without misgivings despite the fact that domestic media and the Korean government criticized Western culture based on .

The Appearance of Seo Taiji

Not only because of social changes, but also because of a certain musician, Korean popular music encountered radical transitions in the beginning of the 1990s. Seo Taiji, who is a former underground bassist and -, led the transitions. He made a dance-oriented boy group called Seo Taiji Aidūl () with two dancers ( Hyun-suk, who later became a founder of YG Entertainment, and Lee Juno) and released his debut album,

Seo Taiji & Boys, in 1992. On this album, Seo Taiji first introduced rap music to the popular music field in Korea and Korean audiences through his first title song “Nan Arayo” (“I

Know”). Although Seo Taiji and Boys had been criticized by critics and older pop singers — their first major national exposure came on a broadcast program featuring several talking heads who commented on new songs, and Seo got the lowest score ever (Lie, 2015, p. 57) — his first album sold more than 1,800,000 copies, regarded as the greatest selling “debut” album ever, and his group became an instant sensation (KBS, 2017).

13

Figure 1. Seo Taiji and Boys’ first debut album (Bando, BDL-0023, 1992).

From this moment, popular music in Korea changed in many ways. Seo Taiji has led to a transformation of K-pop in terms of musical features as well as the music industry. In the musical transition, for example, Jon Lie (2015) points out that Seo Taiji challenged and ultimately destroyed many conventions of South Korean popular music, such as the pervasive use of the Japanese in trot, ballads, and folk music genres (p. 58). In addition, whereas prior K-pop artists who were focusing on specific genres were called “ballad singers,”

“rock musicians,” or “folk musicians,” Seo Taiji has pursued various music genres. Whenever he released an album, he introduced different styles of music. By listening to his albums, people in

Korea encountered hip-hop, heavy metal, dance, , etc.

14

Furthermore, Seo Taiji blended the rap-metal genre with a traditional Korean wind instrument, , in his second album’s title song, “Hayeoga”1(“The Song of Why”), released in 1993. This song starts with a beat box, which is a typical aspect of African American music, along with a powerful distorted electric guitar riff. In all parts of this song, the electric guitar riff is played as the main instrument and there is an electric part, which is a crucial aspect of the genre, for around one minute after the first chorus part.

Based on heavy metal sound, Seo Taiji frequently adds several elements of hip-hop such as a beat box and DJ scratches, and Seo Taiji and Boys, in turn, rap in verse parts. In the chorus part of this song, he adds taepyeongso (traditional Korean wind instrument); many critics at that time appreciated it as an innovation in popular music (Bae, 2007). For the first time, this song successfully blended popular with traditional Korean music. This album sold 2,200,000 copies and is recorded as the first album which sold over 2,000,000 in Korea (KBS, 2017). Through his song, Seo Taiji demonstrated how American culture, including the rap and metal music genres, were localized in Korea. One year after rap music was introduced to the mainstream popular music field in Korea through Seo’s debut album, Korean listeners were able to absorb a localized rap music genre through the features of “Hayeoga,” such as the appropriation of a traditional

Korean instrument.

Lyrically, Seo Taiji was utterly different from other K-pop artists. Whereas the majority of K-pop artists chose to write and sing about love themes, he chose various themes including

1 “Hayeoga” is basically the title of the old poem written by Lee -won in of the dynasty (918-1392). Lee wrote this poem to persuade Jung Mong-joo, who was a scholar and government official of the Goryeo dynasty and murdered by Lee in 1392. After the success of the revolution, Lee Bang-won became the third king of dynasty (1392-1897) preceded by his father and older brother. Seo Taiji appropriates the title of the old poem.

15 not only love but also social problems. For instance, he pointed out educational problems through his song “Kyosil Idea” (“Classroom Ideology”) on his third album, released in 1994. In this song, Seo Taiji castigates the system of Korea and its social context. When it comes to such a context, Sarah Morelli (2001) points out:

The pressure for a place in a university often leads parents to enroll their children for

extra training at a hogwan, or institute. From an early age, many children in the middle

class not only at tend a full day of school, but also go to their hogwan between roughly

4:00 and 10:00 P.M. […] Such children are given little or no free time, and activities such

as sports and go virtually unexplored—with the exception of an enthusiastic

interest in popular music and musicians. (p. 251)

For his part, Seo Taiji quit his schoolwork in the first year of high school because of the dehumanizing educational system and competitive environment. He states that he never regrets his decision to quit schoolwork. Rather, he regrets that he did not quit academic work in middle school (KBS World TV, 2014). Through his lyrics, Seo Taiji, on the one hand, denounces the educational system and parents who compel their children to only study. On the other hand, Seo exhorts students to deliberate in terms of what education means to them and why they are not happy. As an illustration of the first verse and chorus part:

Every morning by 7:30, you put us into a small classroom. And force the same things into

all nine million children’s heads. These dark closed classroom are swallowing us

up. My life is too precious to be wasted here. […] Why don’t you change instead of

wasting your life? Why don’t you change instead of wishing that others would change?

(E. Jung, p. 148)

16

During the industrialization of Korea, many people got high-paying jobs with college degrees.

For this reason, many people think that the to success is to go to renowned colleges, and

Korean parents force their children to study to enter highly competitive colleges. In many cases,

Su-Nung, which is a college scholastic ability (CAST), is the most significant element to be admitted into college. In every year, the in Korea reports that a number of students, unfortunately, commit suicide after (or before) the test because of severe stress. Korean society and parents agree that it is a serious social problem. Such education fever in Korea, however, does not decrease. Based on his personal experience and the Korean social context regarding education fever, Seo Taiji decries such phenomenon. Although this song has been banned by public media and criticized by conservative older generations, many teenagers are still thrilled by the song and empathize with what this song says.

Another song, “Balhaerūl Kkūmkkumyeo” (“Dreaming of ”) on the same album, describes the Korean unification. While other musicians avoid this topic due to political issues,

Seo Taiji was willing to deal with this topic in his “title” song. Seo points out the divided circumstance of the Korean peninsula in the first verse part. As an illustration: “Truly to me, there is one thing to which I aspire. When can I see friends in the split land? While we hesitate, we lose ourselves.” He asserts that it will be unified as soon as possible by singing “vividly, let’s open our hearts and look for the way for us to go. There must be a happier future for us”

(translated by the author). Korea officially has been divided since 1948. After the Japanese occupation, South and had a confrontation regarding ideological conflicts between and . Furthermore, Korea has been in a truce since 1953, the year the

Korean ended. It would be a very touchy topic, specifically for popular artists, to discuss the

17 circumstance of a divided Korea because of the fact that politics on both sides utilize the situation for their own purposes2.

Nevertheless, from that time to the present, diverse forms of popular culture such as movies, TV dramas, novels, poems, and art dealt with such a sensitive issue and tragic situation of Korea. Popular music, on the other hand, merely coped with the situation of divided Korea.

By analyzing the themes of popular music songs from 1984 to 1994 that ranked among the top three on the Melon chart; the biggest streaming music service in Korea, I found that there were

204 songs by 115 artists and groups. The majority of the songs, 164 to be specific, expressed the theme of love. The second popular theme was life, which appeared in 25 songs. The third one is the themes of youth and freedom, which were expressed in 9 songs. The theme of memory and friendship was next, with 5 appearances. There was only one song that expressed the longing for

Korean reunification, which was Seo Taiji’s “Dreaming of Balhae” (Melon Chart Finder, 2017).

Youth and Freedom Memory and Friendship Korean Unification 4.3% 2.4% 0.4%

Life 12.1%

Love 80.8%

Love Life Youth and Freedom Memory and Friendship Korean Unification

Table 1. The distribution of theme of popular songs from 1984 to 1994

2 For example, Chun Doo-hwan, who is a former soldier who became an autocrat, deceived people by arguing that South Korea had been attacked by North Korean emissaries after he illegally seized power.

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No one expected that a huge pop star would directly sing about a very sensitive issue through his title song. According to Shim (2006):

Seo Taiji’s music was so critically acclaimed that in 1998, when a group of music critics

and industry people compiled the best 100 albums in Korean , all four of the

band’s albums were included. Furthermore, Seo Taiji was chosen by The Monthly Joong-

Ang in 1994 of 50 people who had changed Korean society since 1945. (p. 36)

He and his songs affect people of all ages, specifically including teenagers who were less interested in Korean unification. For this reason, people consider him as an influential person in terms of music and society.

Also, Seo Taiji, as an innovative musician, expands a range of popular music in terms of the music industry. Following him, many post-Seo Taiji K-pop artists now attempt diverse music genres and lyrics. Furthermore, it is a kind of norm to take a rest after K-pop artists complete their activities following a new song. Before the appearance of Seo Taiji, there was no such norm. He was the first one who officially announced that he will take a rest in order to prepare the band’s new album. To be specific, he announced on the TV program, Tukjong TV yeon-ye

(Exclusive scoop TV entertainment), after he completed his first album that he will take a tentative retirement in order to prepare his next album (MBCfestival, 2012). Following Seo Taiji, many popular musicians rested after they completed new songs. And since then, it has been formalized in the popular music field in Korea.

When it comes to fandom, youth became a dominant group in terms of consuming popular music after Seo Taiji’s appearance. According to Eun-young Jung (2017), “his impact on popular music in Korea was immense, dance-oriented songs with increased visual focus, allowing a clear distinction to be made between the music of youth and adult audiences. From

19 this point the youth became dominant in the broadcast and marketing of Korean pop” (p. 146).

Moreover, since many aspects of K-pop today derived from Seo Taiji; dance oriented-music, youth fandom, and certain period of activity, Lie (2015) argues that:

Given what I have said about the ambiguous ambit of K-pop, it is perfectly fine to

suggest that So T’ae-ji wa Aidul [Seo Taiji and Boys] invented K-pop […] [S]omething

of a paradigm shift occurred between the advent of So T’ae-ji wa Aidul and the

appearance of the export-oriented K-pop of the latter half of the first decade of the

twenty-first century. (p. 99)

Even though it seems like a controversial argument, it is indisputable and agreed by musicians and critics in Korea that Seo Taiji led prominent transitions of popular music field in

Korea regarding the music as well as the industry. Along with his influences, K-pop idol groups have emerged in the middle and end of the 1990s.

Influences of the Trainee System on K-pop

In 1996, H..T (High-Five of Teenager) debuted as the first K-pop idol group. Their first song “Chõnsa ūi huye” (“Warrior’s Descendant”), which adopts the genre, describes a school violence, which was an uncommon topic for Korean popular music. Combining dance, rap, and vocals, they criticize one of the most severe social problems in Korea. It is an unusual case of not choosing the love theme for their first debut song as most rookies do; even Seo’s theme for his first title song was love. Through this innovative debut song of H.O.T, we can detect influences of Seo Taiji. According to Maliangkay (2014):

Although Seo’s innovative music and presentation found instant appeal, he continued to

innovate and set many popular trends in music, dance, and personal styling throughout

the 1990s. Borrowing sounds and dance routines from a wide range of musical styles,

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including rap, hip-hop, and metal, his act became a major inspiration for the new

generation of students as well as other successful boy bands such as H.O.T. and Sechs

Kies, which did not innovate much and relied considerably on their teenage idol status in

their repertoires and performances. (p. 297)

Although H.O.T was affected by Seo Taiji in many aspects, unlike Seo Taiji, H.O.T had been thoroughly created by their agency, SM entertainment. Producer Lee Soo-man, who founded SM entertainment in 1995, held auditions to create an original boy dance group. After the five members of H.O.T passed their auditions, they were trained for several years in order to hone their musical talents and make a debut. According to Russell (2008), music companies at that time could not rely on only genius and zeitgeist as in Seo Taiji’s case. In order to prosper and thrive in the long run, they needed a system that could provide a steady supply of hits and superstars (p. 147). H.O.T’s producer, Lee Soo-man, was the first person who executed such a system when he produced H.O.T in the middle of the 1990s.

If Seo Taiji contributed to the musical diversity of K-pop, H.O.T contributed to the K- pop industry system and standard K-pop sound today in conjunction with its tremendous success.

Whereas Seo Taiji always tried to attempt new style of music whenever he released his album,

H.O.T. and its successor groups relatively kept one specific music style by following the same simple formula. To be specific, from the first album to fourth album of Seo Taiji and Boys

(1992-1995), the title songs of each album were in different styles — a dance oriented rap music

“Nan Arayo” (“I know”) in 1992, a trash metal mixed with hip hop and traditional Korean music sound “Hayeoga” in 1993, an “Balhaerūl Kkūmkkumyeo” (“Dreaming of

Balhae”) in 1994, and Cypress-Hill style hip hop “Come Back ” in 1995.

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On the other hand, H.O.T. and its followers such as , Shinwha, NRG, and

TVXQ relatively focused more on dance-oriented music based on hip hop sound. Such propensity to follow maintained throughout K-pop groups debuted in the 2000s and 2010s. Four years after its debut, Seo Taiji and Boys disbanded in 1996 leaving behind a vast vacuum in the youth-music scene (Lie, p. 100). H.O.T and its successor groups filled such vacuum with their faithful youth fans. In this way, a dance-oriented music of idol groups from H.O.T. to

BIGBANG became standard K-pop sound today.

Furthermore, since H.O.T proved the efficiency of the trainee system as the first manufactured K-pop group with its tremendous success, other K-pop companies followed the trainee system when they created their new groups/artists. As a result, it has become a norm and almost all the K-pop artists today have been manufactured by the trainee system and followed a certain musical style. This phenomenon clearly shows a feature of popular culture referred to by

Adorno. He points out standardization of popular culture. Adorno said, “The original patterns that are now standardised evolved in a more or less competitive way. Large-scale economic concentrations institutionalized the standardisation and made it imperative” (Witkin, p. 103). In with Adorno’s claim, the trainee system as a certain pattern in the K-pop industry is magnified with H.O.T’s tremendous success, and it becomes a standardization and distinct feature of the K-pop industry. Under the capitalist system, popular music should be sold to people to create revenue. As Witkin (2003) mentioned, “The necessity for standardisation derives from the fact that the popular music must meet the demand of grabbing the individual’s attention and it must also fall within the category of what the listener views as natural music” (p.

103). Needless to say, the trainee system is proven by H.O.T to be a conducive way not only to get people’s attention, but also to make profits.

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The trainee system has a specific process to encourage K-pop agencies’ success. In the trainee system, many applicants who want to be K-pop stars audition first. If they pass the audition, they will be trained for several years. During that time, a K-pop agency provides their trainees with lessons such as singing, , dancing, musical instruments, foreign languages, etc., without any charge. Some K-pop companies, such as JYP, even provide a humanistic education and sexual education for their trainees in order to prohibit unexpected affairs and create an everyone can love (Ha, 2014). After its trainee becomes a star, the agency can get more profits when the agency and a star share the profits. That is the main reason why agencies provide classes without charge.

Since participating in the trainee system is the most reliable way to become a K-pop star, trainees are mostly willing to fully participate by staying in housing provided by their agencies and following the training timetable. Some trainees even quit their schoolwork to be engrossed in the trainee system. In this way, the trainee system affects not only the K-pop industry per se, but also Korean society. The trainee system is a significant element when looking at K-pop as a music industry as well as social phenomenon. K-pop agencies consider their trainees as valuable resources and cultural commodities to make profits; they thoroughly oversee trainees’ musical discipline as well as their personal affairs. For example, trainees have to undergo regular assessments in order to verify their musical evolution; normally, weekly or monthly. If they do not provide evidence of progress, they are eliminated from the trainee program. When I worked for Chungchun Music, Inc., I conducted a lot of auditions. In some cases, applicants had no prior audition experience. In many cases, however, applicants had already trained with another company for one or two years. When I asked them why they were eliminated from the program, they said that “I failed monthly or last assessment of getting debut team.” By providing several

23 classes, K-pop agencies expect trainees to show their potential because it is the way the agencies can withdraw their investment from a business perspective. If trainees do not prove their progression, their agency considers them useless. In this way, trainees are forced to concentrate on taking lessons and practicing to become an artist. For this reason, they cannot have personal cellular phones and, even sometimes, they cannot use the Internet during training sessions. For the same reason, K-pop agencies frequently hold auditions, and they have a Department of

Rookie Development to care for their trainees as significant resources.

As mentioned above, taking an audition is the most assured way to participate in the trainee system for applicants. In the same vein, it is the most effective way to gather talented trainees for K-pop agencies. In order to expand their opportunities, almost all K-pop agencies hold auditions every year. In particular, some agencies, including the major three K-pop companies — SM entertainment, YG entertainment, and JYP entertainment — hold auditions every year not only in Korea but also in the other countries.

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Figure 2. SM Entertainment’s Global Audition Official Web Page in 2017.

As the trainee system is rooted in the K-pop industry, taking the audition is considered as one of the procedures to become a K-pop artist. And this phenomenon provokes people’s interests in terms of such a procedure.

In conjunction with people’s interest, broadcasting stations in Korea competitively have created audition programs from 2009 to the present. Numerous people who dream of being K- pop stars have attended these audition programs. For instance, Superstar K4, which is an audition program made by M.net, recorded over 2 million applicants in 2012 (Hong, 2012).

Since audition TV programs employ the trainee system’s procedures, laymen also can get used to the trainee system. Furthermore, there are a lot of global applicants from Asia, America, and

Europe. Many foreign contestants, including Asians from other Asian countries, Asian

Americans and Canadians, , and whites from America, attended Superstar K.

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Not only K-pop agencies’ global auditions, but also audition TV programs, promote K- pop’s globalization by embracing non-Korean contestants. For instance, in K-pop Star, which is a kind of audition program aired by Seoul Broadcasting System (SBS), there are a lot of non-

Korean applicants such as Brody, Kriesha Tiu, Peter Han, Erin Miranda, etc. It is not rare to see non-Korean contestants in other audition programs too, such as , Sixteen, , etc. In this way, many K-pop groups today often include non-Korean members, usually Asian or

Asian American. For example, Girls’ Generation has a Korean American member named

Tiffany, who talked to host Kelly Ripa on the TV program Live! with Kelly in the U.S in 2012.

Other K-pop idol groups, such as , f(x), TWICE, 2PM, etc., also have non-Korean members. These groups have Japanese, Chinese, and Asian American members.

Although it is not easy for non-Korean performers to become K-pop artists due to cultural differences and barrier, the trainee system gives them some time to acclimate to

Korean culture and language. After they pass K-pop auditions, non-Koreans learn Korean culture and Korean language through the trainee system. For example, , who is a member of female idol group BLACK PINK from Thailand, said, “It’s been 6 years since I came to Korea. At first,

I couldn’t speak Korean at all. It was frustrating how I couldn’t communicate. So I received

Korean lessons every day and my [fellow group] members also helped me a lot on my Korean”

(International Business Times, 2016). If Korean trainees learn foreign languages to promote them to the overseas market, non-Korean trainees learn the Korean language in order to assimilate to Korean culture. From my personal experience, I, as a producer, offered foreign language class to Korean trainees and taught Korean language to Brad Moore of BuskerBusker.

In this way, the trainee system improves non-Koreans’ chances of being K-pop stars and makes them a bridge between Korean popular music and global markets in the same way Tiffany of

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Girls’ Generation led the interview on Live! with Kelly in 2012. From the local trainee system to global auditions, this transition of K-pop has become a reason why K-pop groups today have non-Korean members and a principal factor for the globalization of K-pop in conjunction with

K-pop’s global success.

The trainee system affects K-pop artists’ images and styles as well. Willoughby (2006) quotes magazine, “the manufacturing process not only tutors prospective teen stars in singing and dancing, but also notably, shapes the image and style of each, controlling the costumes that will be worn in performance as well as casual clothing and the kind of car they will drive” (p. 101). As well-made cultural commodities, each member in the K-pop group strategically has specific characters and different roles. It is determined by the producer or their agency while they are participating in the trainee system. When K-pop artists introduce themselves, they usually reveal their role in the group. For more details, Ji-min, a member of

BTS, said, “I’m taking the masculinity image in this group. I’ve been burdened because I’m the only person who can show abdominal muscle among BTS members. But I’m happy to be remembered as abdominal muscle boy.” Another member, V, said, “I’m taking a character of desultory person in this group” (enews 24, 2013). This phenomenon is revealed in female idol groups as well. For example, Jung-yeon, a member of TWICE, said, “I’m taking boyish image in

TWICE.” Another member, Sana, said, “I’m taking cute and sexy image in TWICE” (Kim,

2016). Whereas the majority of K-pop artists usually pursue a heterosexual image, there are some artists who aim to project a homosexual image. Amber, for example, who is a member of f(x), never wears skirts and acts like a boy (Liebler, 2013). Since she has never mentioned her gender identity, people don’t know if it is a strategy of her agency or her own personality. As

Butler (1990) expanded the definition of gender and sex by refusing a binary gender system:

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When the constructed status of gender is theorized as radically independent of sex,

gender itself becomes a free-floating artifice, with the consequence that man and

masculine might just as easily signify a female body as a male one, and woman and

feminine a male body as easily as a female one. (p. 6)

Amber of f(x) does not fit within a binary gender perception. In the K-pop industry, gender or sexual images are strategically transformed by the trainee system of their agencies. In many cases, specifically, before the debut, trainees willingly conform to what their agencies decide because of the fact that agencies have authority to decide their debut.

The relationship between production companies and trainees is a good example to show how hegemony exists in the K-pop field. In this relationship, companies are ruling classes and trainees are subalterns. Trainees as a subaltern group willingly follow the ideology of their agency. K-pop companies as a dominant group possess hegemony, in this case authority over when to debut, and force their trainees to follow their rules. The relationship is able to be maintained for a long time because of the fact that it is based on their agreement. John Storey

(2009) points out:

Hegemony involves a specific kind of consensus: a social group seeks to present its own

particular interests as the general interests of the society as a whole. In this sense, the

concept is used to suggest a society in which, despite oppression and exploitation, there is

a high degree of consensus, a large measure of social stability; a society in which

subordinate groups and classes appear to actively support and subscribe to values, ideals,

objectives, cultural and political meanings, which bind them to, and ‘incorporate’ them

into, the prevailing structures of power. (p. 80)

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In this way, this system is maintained due to their consensus regarding the debut, albeit with an unbalanced power dynamic.

However, such an unbalanced power dynamic often causes social problems, for instance, scams, sexual harassment, and exploitation. These problems sometimes cause legal conflicts between agencies and trainees. Under the unbalanced relationship, many trainees have no other choice but to follow their agency. In some cases, if trainees quit the training program by themselves, their agency will ask for a certain amount of money they spent during the training span. Since many trainees, of course, are not able to reimburse the huge amount of money, they merely conform to the agency or run away. Either way, it leads to legal conflicts in many cases and this unbalanced power dynamic continues after trainees’ debut.

The Involvement of the Korean government

Despite the fact that the trainee system seems to be the reason for the origin of the unbalanced relationship, there is a positive change in recent years. An abnormal contract period, which was once a serious problem, has been solved after the Korean government enacted certain laws in 2009. Before that time, some trainees might have been abandoned by their agency regardless of how many years they spent together. Furthermore, they have to make a contract with their agency, if the agency requires that. For more opportunities, K-pop agencies tend to try to seize a lot of trainees as potential resources without any assurance for trainees’ debut; which means trainees cannot be sure about their future. Since there were no limitations of contract period before, some K-pop agencies made ten or more years’ contracts with their artist who was once trainee. Such phenomena were criticized as “slave contracts” (Williamson, 2011).

The involvement of the Korean government somewhat solved the problems of the unbalanced relationship and generated a certain phenomenon in the K-pop industry. It affects not

29 only artists and businessman of the K-pop field, but also K-pop fans. When it comes to contract span, after the Korean government got involved, K-pop agencies today are only able to make contracts with their artists for a maximum 7 years. It gives a reason for a phenomenon that is called “7th year jinx” in the K-pop industry, which indicates that many K-pop artists or groups break up 7 years following their debut. Indeed, numerous K-pop groups, such as , BEAST,

4minute, , and broke up in their 7th year of contract. It is highly related to the law that the Korean government has enacted. Some fans of K-pop are worried about when their stars are in 7th year of contract. For example, when BIGBANG was in 7th year of contract in 2015, a number of people, especially fans, paid attention to whether they would make a renewal contract with YG entertainment or other companies, or break up. G-Dragon, who is a member of

BIGBANG, revealed that it was the hardest decision of his life to make a new contract with YG entertainment (VIP4DAESUNG, 2016). I assume that he might get irresistible suggestions from other businessmen in the K-pop field. Normally, before the 7th year law, the conditions of the contract are covert, including distribution rate of profits, contract periods, and other conditions.

However, contract span is no longer furtive because of enacted law by the Korean government.

In other words, many other companies have enough time to prepare attractive propositions to renowned artists such as BIGBANG. Needless to say, artists’ decision or hesitation affects their fans. In this way, we can see how the involvement of the Korean government impacts people involved in the K-pop field, including fans.

For the further efforts, the Korean government through a government institution, named

KFTC (Korea Fair Trade Commission), offers the standard contract form and admonish K-pop agencies and artists to utilize such standard contract form when they make a contract. This

30 contract includes certain clauses in terms of contract span, a specific range of work, transparent revenue sharing, and protection of trainees’ rights (KFTC).

In addition, through another government’s institution, named Korea Creative Content

Agency (KOCCA); which is a subordinate institution to Ministry of Culture, Sports, and

Tourism, the Korean government cares for trainees by providing official education programs without any charge. In this program, trainees are able to take classes such as general knowledge of copyright, psychology counseling, sexual education, and how to make a contract with potential companies. As such, the Korean government today considers trainees as a social group and protects them from unexpected conflicts derived from the unbalanced relationship. KOCCA also provides a three hour per year mandatory education program to K-pop agencies. Since 2014, the Korean government has enacted a certain law and provides a certificate of the popular culture entertainment business to qualified companies. In order to be qualified and receive the certificate, applicants who want to enroll popular culture entertainment business have to prove not only her or his experiences in the field of entertainment for more than four years, but also clear information about company such as fiscal condition, location of company, name of the company, and name of representative. When it comes to this ordinance, specifically, KOCCA runs an official web-page (ent.kocca.kr) in which people are able to figure out which companies are legitimately enrolled. Although it seems to be controversial if it would be effective or not, one thing is clear: these are all efforts of the government to prevent potential conflicts.

When I worked for Chungchun Music Inc., I attended the annual mandatory education. In the first class, the organizer, KOCCA, described what element of law has changed and guided what companies have to do (or not do) when they run their company. KOCCA also invited specialists such as an attorney and a resident employee in order to instruct knowledge regarding

31 copyright law and overseas promotion. To be specific, the resident employee explained several tips including cultural differences and local preferences for promotion to the Chinese market.

Through KOCCA, the Korean government subsidizes concerts, album productions, and global promotions. Specifically, KOCCA annually supports several K-pop groups to get them performing at SXSW festival (South by South West), which is an annual popular culture convention held in Austin, Texas. KOCCA held “K-Pop Night Out” in SXSW 2014. The head of

KOCCA, Hong, said that “Recently, the generation of K-pop 3.0 is occurring with global audiences’ attention toward not only idol dance group but also diverse music genres of K-pop.

This SXSW would be a momentum for the K-pop 3.0” (Shin, 2014). As Hong said, diverse styles of K-pop, including rock, electronic, dance, and hip hop, were performed in SXSW 2014. Since then, K-Pop Night Out has been held in SXSW and this year, 2018, is the 5-year anniversary. In addition, the government offers other opportunities of global music festivals, such as TGE (The

Great Escape) music festival in the U.K. Although it can be changed depending on festivals, in many cases, KOCCA provides whole expenditures of itinerary not only including flight tickets as well as lodging charge for artists and certain number of staff. Many K-pop groups, regardless of their popularity, could get chances to perform in global popular music fields.

KOCCA not only supports global promotion, but also holds a music convention in Seoul, named MU:CON. It is Asia’s leading music business market, focusing on interaction and communication of Asian and global music industry. KOCCA provides classes, conferences, performances, and business meetings with global company to local musicians and music businessmen. Through competition, KOCCA offers local musicians chances to perform in famous music festival such as SXSW, Glastonbury, The Great Escape, and Canadian Music

Week. In order to make MU:CON as global music convention, KOCCA invites world well-

32 known musicians, producers, and entrepreneurs. Specifically, Fernando Garibay, who produced

Lady Gaga, , and , attended MU:CON 2017 as the keynote speaker. As such, KOCCA is trying to make MU:CON a significant opportunity to local K-pop musicians, and an attractive music market in which global music companies can communicate with Asian popular music fields and find talented musicians.

Figure 3. Poster of MU:CON 2016. The expression “대한민국 영토, 콘텐츠로 넓힌다!” means “We expand territory of Korea with Contents” (image from www.kocca.kr).

Such governmental supports often affect the way that popular music is produced in

Korea. To many K-pop agencies, governmental aids are highly conducive to overcome the limitations of the domestic music market in Korea (discussed in the second chapter). When the

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Korean government promulgates supportive programs, it also reveals a certain rubric for evaluating applicants. For example, KOCCA provides a specific rubric when it promulgates the subsidy plan of popular music album production and promotion. In the rubric of this plan, there are several aspects in terms of sanitization such as appropriateness of contents, commerciality, popularity, and professionality (KOCCA, 2018). KOCCA considers such elements as a measure when it evaluates applicants. The below table represents an example of a rubric provided by

KOCCA.

Assessment Items Details Points Ability of the agency (production performance, staffs’ professionality) 10

Planning skills Possibility to reach goal (schedule plan, appropriateness of contents) 10 30

Possibility of success (commerciality, popularity) 10

Capability of Musician (reputation on media, awards) 15 Capability of 30 Musician Musical activity (albums, sales, concerts) 15

Advertising and promotion in media 10

Advertising Plan Social Media promotion and fan marketing plan 10 30

Plan for the album showcase 10

Allotted charges of agency 5 Budget Distribution 10 Appropriateness of budget distribution 5

Total 100

Table 2. Assessment items of KOCCA for the popular music album production aid 2018 (www.kocca.kr).

If a K-pop agency is anointed as a successful company, the government will want to support them by providing a fiscal subsidy equivalent to around 3 million Won (approximately

28,500 USD) for one regular album production. Of course, there are other supportive plans for different style of perquisites such as overseas promotion. In these plans, the Korean government

34 also suggests similar assessment rubrics for the plans. In order to obtain opportunities of supports, K-pop agencies consider certain standards set by the Korean government when they produce new albums and groups. In this way, popular music in Korea is sanitized and becomes a government-supported commodity.

There were certain grievances of people who work in the entertainment industry regarding mandatory class and required enrollment. When I attended the annual mandatory class, someone had complained in the question and answer session why the government considers us as potential sexual criminals, impostors, and abusers. Some people might feel that way because many classes mainly focused on prevention of such crimes. However, considering mandatory education and assistances for global promotion, I assume that the Korean government wants not only to control social influences of K-pop in order to prevent unexpected social losses, but also to utilize K-pop as a promotion tool for the national image of Korea.

From the monumental shift to the Korean government’s official support, K-pop has been developed and become an influential content producer including local scenes as well as the global scene. Such noticeable transitions are crucial aspects of understanding K-pop today. In addition, those aspects are helpful in the way to look at how K-pop represents Korean people and society. It is imbued with the new generation’s thirst for global culture, anxiety of many trainees, and the Korean government’s concern. For these reasons, K-pop has no other choice but to be a diverse cultural content producer.

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CHAPTER TWO: RACE AND LANGUAGE

This chapter sheds light on K-pop today, focusing on race and language. The term “K- pop” implies that K-pop is Korean popular music sung by Korean musicians in the Korean language, but this is not always the case. For a long time, such a perspective was taken for granted and it was true in many ways. As K-pop expanded and became more influential in the world, it developed distinct features that did not exist in it before. One of them is that many K- pop songs are sung in non-Korean languages. From a single word to an entire song, for example,

English has been present in K-pop lyrics since the 1990s. Along with the globalization of K-pop, various languages including English, Chinese, and Japanese are now utilized for K-pop songs and the functions and impacts of the foreign languages vary. If small portions of mixed English lyrics mainly act to attract audiences’ attention, entire lyrics in foreign languages in K-pop songs express K-pop’s diversity, features of the K-pop industry today, and even complex identities.

Another feature is that many people, Koreans as well as non-Koreans, are interested in becoming

K-pop artists. There have been, indeed, many cases where talented non-Korean musicians from diverse countries have been selected by K-pop agencies to be members of K-pop groups. In this way, K-pop has become a cultural area in which diverse races and languages are interwoven. By looking at two different kinds of K-pop groups, one consisting of all Koreans but singing in non-

Korean languages and the other having non-Korean members but singing in the Korean language, I explore how K-pop has a diversity of race and language and what this phenomenon means for interpreting Korean society and K-pop today.

K-pop Songs Sung by Koreans but in Non-Korean Languages

It is not rare to see K-pop songs today released in other languages. For example, prominent K-pop idol groups such as EXO, BTS, BIGBANG, and TWICE usually sing in the

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Korean language as well as non-Korean languages when they release brand-new songs.

Specifically, whenever EXO, a typical boy group produced by SM entertainment, releases their new songs, they sing not only in Korean, but also in Chinese; they even film their twice, a Korean version and a Chinese version. A female idol group, TWICE, also sung in

Japanese when they released their song “TT” in Japan in 2017. Unlike EXO and TWICE, who have non-Korean members from mainland China, Taiwan, and Japan, K-pop groups only consisting of Koreans also sing in foreign languages. For example, two renowned K-pop boy groups today, BIGBANG and BTS, have been releasing their songs in Japanese.

Whereas many K-pop songs today are sung in foreign languages, it was hard to find foreign languages in Korean popular music before the 1990s. When it comes to Japanese, specifically, since the Korean government officially banned until 1998, there were definitely no Japanese lyrics in the Korean popular music field. For a long time, people in Korea could not access Japanese popular culture in legal ways, even though it was prevalent through illegitimate ways. From my personal experience, I often went to the Sinchon area in Seoul to obtain the rock group X-Japan’s concert videos when I was in middle school. I learned from school and the media that Japanese popular culture is filthy and lascivious which are things that have to be avoided, notwithstanding that I was able to access Japanese popular cultures under the table. Due to the fact that many Koreans suffered during the Japanese occupation era (1910-1945), anti-Japan sentiment was pervasive in Korean society at the time.

For this reason, while South Korea and Japan officially agreed to a diplomatic exchange between both countries in 1965, cultural exchange was not inaugurated until the end of the 1990s. It was only when the Kim Dae-jung administration in 1998 allowed legal imports of Japanese popular culture that Korean society gradually accepted it — “the Korean government inaugurated its

37 open-door policy toward Japanese culture by lifting the ban on Japanese film, videos and publishing in 1998, on the Japanese performing industry in 1999, and on animation, pop music, music recordings, games, and broadcast programs from Japan in 2000” (Fuhr, 2017, p. 137).

Before this took place, it was impossible to imagine hearing Japanese songs in the Korean popular music field.

English also was not a part of the Korean popular music discourse in the 1970s and 1980s

(Lee, 2004, p. 429) because Western culture was considered unhealthy and something to be avoided for a long time. To be specific, the Chung-hee authoritarian regime (1962-1979) categorized Western popular culture as unhealthy and therefore as a subject of governmental censorship and bans (Fuhr, 2017, p. 136). In conjunction with the emergence of the new generation (sinsedae) as the backbone of the society in the beginning of the 1990s, people’s thoughts towards foreign culture gradually have changed, and mixed English lyrics have occurred in the Korean popular music field.

Since the 1990s, many Korean popular songs have included English words or sentences in order to emphasize certain parts. As an example, a female group debuted in 1998, Fin.K.

(“Fine Killing Liberty”, pronounced Pingkle), commences a chorus part of their song “Nae

Namja Chingu Aegae” (“To My Boyfriend”) in English lyrics; and subsequently, Korean lyrics followed.

Lyric Translations. The lyrics below describes how they underscore their chorus parts using English phrases (in italics) and subsequent Korean lyrics are translated by the author.

Call me, call me, call call, give a call Call me, call me, call call, give a call

내 모든걸 원한다면 너에게 줄게. If you want my everything, I would give you.

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내 모든 사랑은 너를 위한거야. All my love is waiting for you.

Call me, call me, call call, give a call Call me, call me, call call, give a call

내 모든걸 원한다면 너에게 줄게. If you want my everything, I would give you.

지금 이대로 너의 품속에 나를 데려가줘, Take me into your heart, right away.

난 네거야. I belong to you.

Another female group in the same era, S.E.S (Sea, , Shoo), released their song

“Dreams Come True” in 1998. This song is a remake version of female duo Nylon

Beat’s “Like a Fool.” When S.E.S remade it, they maintained the first line of the original English lyrics at the beginning of their chorus part:

Funny how all dreams come true Funny how all dreams come true

나를 지켜줄거야, 아껴왔던 작은 사랑도 Like a fool I’m into you. The day we met I

lost my sanity

Funny how all dreams come true Funny how all dreams come true

너의 곁에 그려질 꿈결같은 나의 미래도 Like a fool I’m into you. You washed away my insecurity.

When it comes to the reason and impact of English lyrics in K-pop songs, Lee (2004) states that “the increasing influence of Western music on non-Western music either in music or lyrics is often connected to the issue of economic growth and modernity” (p. 432). Along with economic growth from the 1970- and the first civil government under Kim Young-Sam

(1993-1998), Korean society was ready to embrace western culture, and its influence increased

39 as Lee pointed out. In addition, an ethnomusicologist, Fuhr (2017), states that the successful usage of English not only constructs a sophisticated image of K-pop, but also builds a linguistic gateway in which international fans can reach the songs (p. 66). As Lee and Fuhr point out,

English phrases in K-pop songs are a testimony to Korea’s strong economic growth, the modernity of Korean society, and an exertion of constructing sophisticated images of K-pop. Not only did K-pop songs include English catch phrases, but K-pop is increasingly written entirely in foreign languages in order to be a gateway for global fans.

This phenomenon accelerated after the middle of the 2000s. In the first generation of K- pop artists, BoA, a female singer who debuted in 2000 in Korea, is considered a successful K- pop artist in Korea as well as Japan. She subsequently debuted in Japan in 2001 and had a huge success with her first regular album Listen to My Heart. As a typical artist manufactured by her agency, she learned the Japanese language while she was in the trainee system and mastered it before she debuted in Japan. Except for one remix song sung in English, by singing all the other songs of this album in Japanese, BoA was able to appeal to Japanese audiences and surmount any language barrier; she even stayed with a Japanese family in order to overcome cultural differences (Lie, 2015, p. 102). Although this scheme met with success in Japan, singing in the local language does not always assure success. When BoA attempted to make a foray into the

U.S popular music field with her first single album Eat You Up in 2008, she again sang her song in the local language, English in this case. In order to support her debut in the U.S., her agency,

SM entertainment, even opened its U.S headquarters and hired a range of top-hit producers, such as Bloodshy and Avant, and and Brian Kennedy, who have worked with ,

Britney Spears, , and (Ohanesian, 2009). Nevertheless, her debut in the U.S. is evaluated as a flop (Oh, 2011). Other K-pop artists such as Se7en, , and Girls’

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Generation also failed in the U.S music market even though they sang in English (Herman, 2014)

— Wonder Girls’ producer Park -young officially admitted Wonder Girls’ failure in the U.S. market when he had an interview on a Korean TV show (Alona, 2013).

It might not be necessary to sing in local languages to be successful in the global music market. For instance, Psy and BTS all sang in Korean and achieved huge success in the U.S.

After Psy’s “Gangnam Style” success in 2012, BTS is considered the most successful K-pop group in the world. They, as I mentioned above, not only won “Top Social Artist” at the 2017

Billboard Music Awards, but also performed their song “DNA” in the Korean language at the

American Music Awards in 2017. They have been added to the for the being most mentioned musician on Twitter. According to Kim (2017):

The Guinness Book of World Records congratulated BTS on its official Twitter account

for their appearance in the reference book as well as their performance on the 2017

American Music Awards that took place at Theater in on Sunday,

local time. ()

Not only Korean news media but also the U.S. news media, such as CNN, focus on BTS’ accomplishments in the world. Marian Liu of CNN, for example, notices BTS’ prominent success in the world. Regarding BTS’ global success, Liu (2017) describes that “From the US and Poland, to and , the Korean pop group’s latest album, : Her, currently holds the top spot on iTunes’ top selling album chart in 73 countries and territories in three ” (CNN). Considering “Gangnam Style” and “DNA,” it seems like there is no certain causation between musicians’ success and fully singing in local languages; these two songs were sung in Korean and included limited English expressions. Nevertheless, K-pop musicians including BTS have been releasing their songs in Korean as well as local languages in

41 order to appeal to global fans and obtain more opportunities. Specifically, after its debut in 2013, apart from interlude tracks, remix versions, and skit tracks, BTS released 98 songs, of which 70 songs were sung in Korean and 28 songs were sung in Japanese, including their typical songs,

“DOPE,” “DNA,” “MIC Drop,” and “Pi, Ttam, Nunmul” (“Blood Sweat & Tears”). In addition,

6 songs are only sung in Japanese, not Korean.

The reason why K-pop musicians, not partly but fully, sing in foreign languages is highly relevant to the Korean popular music industry. Although there are a number of aspirants for becoming K-pop stars from other countries, it does not mean that the popular music market in

Korea is sizable. This is because it not only has a limited number of local audiences — the population of South Korea is only 51 million (Worldometers, 2018) — but also local audiences’ tendency in consuming popular music is less aggressive.

When it comes to Chinese and Japanese lyrics in K-pop songs, there are reasonable purposes that can clarify why many K-pop groups sing in Chinese and Japanese languages.

According to Russell (2008):

Korea’s music sales before Internet file-sharing hurt the music business were surprisingly

small — just $300 million in 2000, versus $6.4 billion in Japan, and $14 billion in the

United States. China was very small then, at $78 million, but with Hong Kong ($108

million) and Taiwan ($244 million) added in, Chinese-speaking territories’ sales were

quite substantial, and mainland China was growing quickly. (p. 156)

Russell (2008) points out that Lee Soo-man, SM entertainment founder, was aware of how small the Korean market is and embarked on his business in neighboring countries in order to enlarge business beyond the limitations of the Korean music market. Not only are China and Japan geographically close, but both countries also have attractiveness towards K-pop agencies. First of

42 all, China is the most populous country in the world; the population of China is 1.41 billion in

2018, which is around 27 times more than the South Korea’s population (Worldometers, 2018).

Even though there are rampant piracy issues, and the majority of the Chinese people might not be music fans or suitable audiences in terms of consuming popular music, the Chinese popular music market still has potential to be the biggest music market in the world. When it comes to the potential for music streaming services in China, Andy Ng, Music Entertainment

Group’s vice president, says:

Our number of monthly active users accessing music is actually over 600 million, which

means, at 15 million, our conversion to subscription is still less than 3%. If you look at

other services, in other conversion rate is more like 20-30%, so we see a huge

opportunity and potential for growth, as long as the market situation keeps improving and

the piracy issues keep improving. (IFPI, 2017, p. 28)

In addition, recorded music revenues grew 20.3% in China in 2016. For these reasons, the three global music companies today, , , and , are also competitively trying to expend their business in the Chinese market, according to an

IFPI report.

Next, Japan, following the U.S music industry, has the second largest popular music industry, which is a magnitude of $4,615 million in the world; South Korea ranked as the 10th largest music industry, $833 million, in 2015 (KOCCA, 2016). Based on its large magnitude of music market and passionate music consumers, the Japanese market is an attractive field that can bring greater revenues to K-pop companies. Table 3 below describes how Japanese music consumers are more passionate about purchasing music than Koreans.

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21% 20% 29%

5% Japan 44% South Korea

29% 30% 22%

Purchased Music Video Streaming Purchased Music Video Streaming Audio Streaming Audio Streaming Radio

Table 3. Comparison between Japan and South Korea music consumers

(IFIP, Music Consumer Insight Report 2017).

Whenever I visited and in Japan, I met a number of who willingly purchased music albums at music stores such as Tower Records and HMV. I was surprised that the prices of albums were not that inexpensive; many Japanese purchased them though, at least three to five albums, without any hesitation. It was very impressive because I was barely able to meet people like that in Korea. According to IFIP’s Global Music Report

2017, although the physical format of global recorded music revenues declined by 7.6% compared to the previous year, the physical sector still accounts for 34% of the global market and is particularly significant in leading countries such as Japan and (p. 12). Compared to Korean audiences, Japanese audiences are enthusiastic consumers in the popular music market. For these reasons, it is not weird that many K-pop agencies are fascinated by Chinese and Japanese music markets. According to KOCCA (2016), Japan has the biggest rate of export,

63.6%, of Korean popular music. Following Japan, China has a subsequent rate of export,

23.6%, of Korean popular music in 2015. The next one is South , which records 10.6%.

Although several K-pop groups sing in English, interestingly has the lowest rate of export, 0.3%, of K-pop.

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K-pop songs sung in foreign languages are an indication of the globalization and diversity of K-pop. K-pop today successfully (or unsuccessfully) exists in China, Japan, and the

U.S. in conjunction with their local languages. For example, TWICE released its recent song

“Candy Pop” and a male idol K-pop group, , also released its song “Do You Remember” in

February 2018. Both groups ranked number one and two on the weekly single chart on February

19, 2018 (data derived from February 5th to 11th) of the Oricon, the Japanese music chart equivalent to Billboard in the U.S.

Figure 4. Oricon Single Chart on Feb 19, 2018 (Oricon, 2018).

Even though both TWICE and B1A4 are typical K-pop groups — B1A4, specifically, consists of five Korean male musicians — they did not release their songs in Korean, rather, they released both songs in Japanese. Interestingly, in both songs, TWICE and B1A4 commence with an

English expression in the chorus part and subsequently sing in Japanese.

Lyric Translations. The lyrics below describe how K-pop groups utilize two foreign languages in the chorus of their songs. English phrases are in italics and subsequent Japanese lyrics are translated by Keisuke Kimura.

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“Do You Remember” by B1A4

Do you remember, do you remember? Do you remember, do you remember?

あの夕日 あの浜 ? the sunset, the beach? Do you remember, do you remember me, Do you remember, do you remember me, yeah? yeah?

“Candy Pop” by TWICE

Candy Candy Pop Pop 君の Candy Candy Pop Pop,

Honey Honey な笑顔に My heartbeat won’t stop pounding ドキドキ Heartbeat by your Honey Honey smile 止まらない ねえどうして Sweetie Tell me, why is it Sweetie

Since neither song has been produced in the Korean language yet, Korean audiences have no choice but to listen to these songs in a foreign language. In other words, they listen to “K- pop” songs that they might not understand because of language barriers. It might cause a confusion as to the genre definition. I thought some people might not think that such songs are

K-pop because of their non-Korean language lyrics. Regarding my curiosity, I conducted interviews with 10 non-Korean students including students from Japan at BGSU by having them listen to K-pop songs including EXO’s “Growl” in Chinese and TWICE’s “TT” in Japanese. The majority of my participants, interestingly, said that K-pop songs sung in non-Korean languages are K-pop regardless of non-Korean lyrics.

One of my interviewees, Mariia Spirina from Russia, focuses on the agency when she defines if it is K-pop. According to her, “I don’t see common thing musically between them […]

What I see the common thing is a marketing like where they were produced, what companies released their music. They all focus on Korean market” (M. Spirina, personal communication,

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November 11, 2017). The other interviewees, Niket Khetan from Nepal and Hugo Rocha from

Bolivia, think that they are all K-pop groups despite the fact that they sing in non-Korean languages. They said that “we are not familiar with K-pop. But K-pop has to do dancing, a lot of colors, and more group people sing together. Those are things to define what K-pop is” (N.

Khetan and H. Rocha, personal communication, November 11, 2017). My Japanese interviewees, Emily Ambrose and Risa Suzuki, even focus more on appearance, even though they did not figure out which members of TWICE are Korean and Japanese. In terms of TWICE

“TT,” Ambrose said that “I couldn’t really tell who was Japanese and who was Koreans. But I know that TWICE are very popular right now in Japan. I did see that they are on TV a couple little bit ago. But I could not tell them while I’m watching the video.” Suzuki also said that “I know there are Japanese. But I couldn’t find well them. Because their faces are similar. Their pronunciation is good. So, I don’t find which one is Japanese.” It might sound like TWICE is a - pop group in conjunction with a similar facial appearance and sufficient pronunciation in

Japanese. Both interviewees, however, think that TWICE is a K-pop because of their fashion, style and certain gestures that are not Japanese. Suzuki said that “Their fashion and makeup […]

It’s a little bit different from Japanese makeup or fashion style […] Korean fashion is like no sleeve, short pants, and red lip. A Japanese version is not so much sexy. And their hand gesture making a heart is Korean thing” (E. Ambrose and R. Suzuki, personal communication, February

11, 2018). Although my interviewees agree that language is an important aspect to define a genre, the majority of them focus more on other aspects such as appearance, musical/dance style, the number of group members, certain gestures, and foundation, rather than languages. They tend to consider singing in foreign languages as a tactic of promotion.

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In order to obtain more of the audience’s attention or express otherness, K-pop songs have been sung in diverse languages and this aspect becomes one of the distinct features of K- pop. As Stevens (2008) stressed in her book Japanese Popular Music: Culture, Authenticity and

Power, utilizing foreign languages in other countries’ popular songs might be a process of

“internationalizing” (p. 132). K-pop expressed by diverse languages means that it is now undergoing the “internationalizing” process and becoming an example of cultural globalization.

Such a phenomenon is not confined to language. As much as diverse languages exist, diverse races also exist in the K-pop field today.

K-pop Songs Sung by non-Koreans but in Korean

When it comes to non-Korean musicians, I analyze 20 K-pop groups having non-Korean members. The number of non-Korean musicians out of 149 individuals is 51 in this analysis. The majority of non-Korean musicians among these K-pop groups are Asians or Asian-Americans from Japan, mainland China, Taiwan, Thailand, and the U.S.

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The Number No. Group Debut of Member Non-Korean Members Remarks (non-Korean) Both are Korean American. 1 Girls’ 08.05.2007 9 (3) Tiffany, Jessica, Sunny Jessica quit the band in 2014. Generation (USA) Sunny is dual citizen Korea and USA. 2 M 04.30.2008 8 (2) Henry (), Henry is a Chinese-Canadian. Zhoumi (China) 3 2PM 09.04.2008 6 (1) (Thailand) Victoria (China), Amber is a Taiwanese- 4 f(x) 09.05.2009 5 (2) Amber (USA) American. quit the band in 2015. 5 miss A 07.01.2010 4 (2) Jia, Fei (China) Disbanded in 2017 6 M.I.B 10.25.2011 4 (1) Gangnam (Japan) Disbanded in 2017 7 BuskerBusker 03.29.2012 3 (1) Brad (USA) 8 Fiesta 08.31.2012 6 (2) Cao Lu (China), Cheska quit the band in 2014. Cheska (USA) Lay, Tao, Kris, Luhan Kris & Luhan quit the band 9 EXO 06.03.2013 12 (4) (China) in 2014. Tao quit the band in 2015. Mark (USA), Mark is a Taiwanese 10 01.20.2014 7 (3) Jackson (China), American. BamBam (Thailand) Jackson is from Hong Kong. 2 members added in 2016. 11 CLC 03.19.2015 5 (1) Son (Thailand) One of them is Elkie from Hong Kong Momo, Sana, Mina Mina is dual citizen Japan 12 TWICE 10.20.2015 9 (4) (Japan), and USA. Tzuyu (Taiwan) 13 WJSN 02.25.2016 13 (4) Xiao, Xuan Yi, Mei Qi (China) 14 06.27.2016 10 (2) Kyulkyung (China), is a Korean-American. Kyla (USA) 15 06.28.2016 9 (1) Sally (China) Mark (Canada), Mark is a Korean-Canadian. Yuta (Japan), Johnny is a Korean- 16 NCT 07.10.2016 18 (9) Johnny (USA), American. Renjun, Chenle, Kun is a Chinese-Thai. Winwin, Lucas (China), Kun, Ten (Thailand) 17 Black Pink 08.08.2016 4 (2) Lisa (Thailand), Rosé is a Korean-New Rosé () Zealander. 18 CoCo Avenue 04.09.2017 2 (2) Jenny, Jenna (USA) Sime (), Koki is an Asian American. 19 EXP Edition 04.17.2017 4 (4) Frankie (), Hunter, Koki (USA) 20 08.07.2017 11 (1) Lai Kuan (Taiwan)

Table 4. 20 K-pop groups having non-Korean members3

3 I analyze the original formations of the groups from when they first debuted even though there are many changes in the future. In order to clarify, I remark some notes if the group has some

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Below two tables reveal that the majority of non-Korean members are of Asian ethnicity despite the fact that they are from various countries, including the US.

100 45 40 90 35 80 30 70 25 60 20 50 15 40 10 30 5 20 0 % 10 0 % Asian Caucasian African- American

Table 5. Nationality and ethnicity of non-Korean members

In many cases, it is not easy to figure out which members are non-Koreans because of analogous racial feature. They have similar skin and hair colors. In addition, they eagerly learned and practiced a lot to become fluent speakers of the Korean language. For these reasons, K-pop audiences have not figured out non-Korean members without their announcement. However, from the middle of the 2010s, non-“Asian” musicians from Western countries appear in the K- pop field. For example, there are K-pop groups having African American musicians or consisting of all non-Koreans (non-Asians) but singing in the Korean language. Actually, there were several biracial musicians who were born and grew up in Korea, for example, Insooni, Yoon Mi-rae, Lee

Man-bok, and Lee Michelle. Recent non-Korean musicians, however, are different from them in that they were born in other countries and spent most of their time in these other countries before they come to Korea.

changes. I also omit Alex Reid of RaNia because she joined the group four years after their debut.

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Since Korea historically consists of a -ethnic people — 99% of South Koreans identify as ethnically Korean ( Encyclopedia, 2017) — the existence of non-Korean musicians, specifically non-Asians, is meaningful. Unlike the US having various terms (African

American, Asian American, Native American, Hispanic, and Caucasian) racial categories are not diverse in Korea. Although Korean society recently pays more attention to diverse races and multi-cultural families, racial diversity has not been a common issue. When it comes to the notion of race, people in Korea are prone to think about Northeast Asians from China and Japan, and Southeast Asians from , the , and Thailand, which means that racial categories are limited and not diverse in Korea. As Omi and Winant (1994) mention, “Race is a concept which signifies and symbolizes social conflicts and interest by referring to different types of human bodies it is an unstable and ‘decentered’ complex of social meanings constantly being transformed by political struggle” (p. 55). In other words, race is a crucial element of social configuration, a social signifier, and a symbolic construct that identifies certain social conditions. As examples of case studies, I explore three K-pop groups, RaNia, CoCo Avenue, and EXP Edition in order to how different racial musicians in the K-pop field reflect Korean society today.

In 2015, a female K-pop dance group, RaNia (later became BP RaNia), added an African

American rapper, Alexandria Reid (Benjamin, 2015). Reid, from Kansas, is a biracial person with a Caucasian father and African-American mother. It is the first case of having an African

American member with Koreans in a K-pop group. Due to her otherness, the Korean broadcasting station (KBS) was interested in her story and created one episode of the TV program, My Neighbor, Charles dedicated to her. This program focuses not only on Reid’s

51 musical career in Korea, but also on her difficulties derived from the language barrier and cultural differences.

Reid was managed by her K-pop agency, DR music, in the same way that many K-pop musicians are. It means that she experiences the K-pop industry in the same way that many

Korean musicians do. She lives in lodging provided by her agency and she is cared for and controlled by the agency. One interesting thing in her case is that she already has a career in the

U.S entertainment industry as a musician and model. One of her outstanding moments is featuring as Chris Brown’s music-video love interest in his collaboration “You

Changed Me” (Benjamin, 2015). Even though she has a career in the U.S., she decided to become a K-pop artist. In terms of her motivation, she asked “How many times in life are you faced with the opportunity to make history? [My agency in the U.S. told me] ‘you have a momentum right now keep doing what you are doing here.’ You know, they did not advise me to leave. But, my heart was to come here” (KBS, 2016). In this way, she started her career in Korea as the first African American K-pop member.

In the K-pop field, African American musical influences are enormous. For instance, the majority of K-pop groups have a rapper as a main member. It is never hard to hear the rap part in

K-pop songs, especially dance music after the 1990s. Furthermore, since many rap parts of K- pop are in English, not in Korean, Reid, as an authentic African American rapper, holds a very important and advantageous position not only in her group, but also in the K-pop field more generally. Reid, nevertheless, reveals her struggles as an African American K-pop artist. In My

Neighbor, Charles, she reveals hardships derived from miscommunications and cultural differences, and her struggles to overcome them. For instance, since Korean society has a strict hierarchical relationship between sónbae (senior colleague) and hubae (junior colleague) in

52 many social areas such as school and the workplace, a certain courtesy such as the “90-degree bow” is considered as a gesture of respect that people, usually hubae, have to do. In the K-pop field, such a 90-degree bow is important and considered as a requirement. If hubae artists fail to bow to the sónbae artists even though it was unintentional, people in general think that they are disrespectful. In order to impress, hubae artists in the K-pop field are always trying to not miss their 90-degrees bow to sónbae. In my personal experience, whenever I visited broadcasting stations to perform, numerous rookie artists bowed to people whom they considered sónbae.

Reid, even though she is a non-Korean, bowed to the waist whenever she met seniors in the K- pop field. In terms of such cultural difference, she said, “In America, anyone you see does not matter who they are. If you’re there, you could see Beyoncé. And it’s just, Hi. You know. Here.

Hi, No! If you see them onetime: bow. If you see them two times: two bows…” (KBS, 2016). In conjunction with the language barrier, certain cultural differences exist as obstacles she needs to overcome to be a K-pop star.

One of her hardships derived from a gap between expectations of the K-pop industry and her African heritage. She needed to wake up at least two hours early before performing the song

“Demonstrate” in order to make her hair easy to comb. She even wears straight hair during “Start a Fire” in order to satisfy people’s expectations for straight hair. In her interview with Billboard, she said “With my hair on top of it…I was so worn down and exhausted during ‘Demonstrate’ that this time I just decided [that] I’m going to take some work off of myself and wear my hair straight. I like my hair better curly. It’s just with this schedule I can’t. It’s too much. I need that couple hours of sleep” (Herman, 2017).

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Figure 5. Comparison Reid’s original curly hair with her hair during “Star a Fire”

(left photograph from Billboard and right one from ).

In the same way that “whiteness in American culture is considered as racialized norm— rendering those who are not white as racially marked others” (Streeter, 2005, p. 185), Reid’s race is considered as other in Korea. In terms of deracializing process, Streeter (2005) said, “This kind of deracializing process – hair that becomes straighter and blonder, bodies photographed so that skin appears lighter, the use of pastel rather than deep-toned cosmetics – seems to be an unfortunate byproduct of fame for many female celebrities” (p. 196). Based on Reid’s statement

“I like my hair better curly,” it is truly an unfortunate consequence of fame and something she had to do in order to satisfy people’s anticipation. In other words, she was forced to conform to a standard of beauty in Korea and K-pop industry’s norm and she tried to be Koreanized, herself giving up her Africanness.

Racism in Korea is not a common issue — even though it definitely exists — as much as in the U.S. because of the fact that Korea is not a multiracial country. In the same way, racism

54 has rarely been seen in the K-pop field. When it comes to non-Korean musicians from other

Asian countries, Korean audiences and global K-pop fans disregarded their otherness derived from races, nationalities, cultural differences, and accents. By embracing non-Asian musicians,

K-pop becomes a place where racism issues occur. As the first African American member of a

K-pop group, Reid has been faced with condemnation in reaction to her skin color. Some people denounce Reid due to her appearing more white and appropriating Korean culture. For instance,

“after a recent Lunar New Year photo shoot featuring RaNia wearing traditional Korean clothing, Reid alone faced major criticism for daring to wear the outfit; nobody questioned whether RaNia’s Chinese member should be wearing Korean clothing” (Herman, 2017). Based on the K-pop industry’s norm; in many cases the agency or producer has a right of decision, we can assume that bleaching her skin, changing her hair, and appropriating Korean culture are not her decisions, but her agency’s determination. In the K-pop industry, there is an asymmetric power relationship between agencies and their talent. One of the applicants of K-pop star, Sujin, points out that “I knew something was going on, but I had no influence in the decision-making process…they always told us to work hard and to do whatever they say…We accepted what they gave to us” (Fuhr, p. 80). In the same way, Reid might merely follow what her company suggests regarding her appearance. Nevertheless, she has been condemned because of her different skin color. Furthermore, some people appraise her with the stricter standard because of her otherness.

In her interview with Billboard, she states that some people consider her as an inappropriate musician for K-pop regardless of her capacity. Reid states:

If I don’t speak enough Korean, “Alex doesn’t know any Korean she shouldn’t be

there”…When I speak Korean, “Oh, Alex has an accent. She sounds American. No, no

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she shouldn’t be there.” If I do well with my Korean, it’s like, “Okay she probably just

memorized that phrase. Can she know something better?” (Herman, 2017)

Her experiences in the K-pop field represent that Korean society is not prepared to face a multiracial environment. Also, what she experienced is an example of racism and racial exploitation. Her racial features could not be protected by forcing to conform to the standard of beauty in Korean society and K-pop, whereas her musical distinctiveness was exploited by capitalists in the K-pop field. As Silva (2007) pointed out “thoroughly capitalist, from the nineteenth century on, racism would be added to other symbolic mechanisms of class exploitation as an excessive ideological device the dominant class imposed upon the exploited”

(p. xxvii); racism in the K-pop field acted as a symbolic mechanism of exploitation. Her willingness to be a history-making singer confronted many obstacles derived from her otherness.

Although she quit RaNia in 2017 (@thealexreid, 2017), regardless of her success or failure, she already might achieve her goal because of the fact that she is recorded as the first Black member of a K-pop group (Herman, 2017).

Unlike Reid’s case, CoCo Avenue is recorded as the first K-pop group consisting of “all” female African American musicians. Two members of CoCo Avenue, Jenna Rose and Jenny

Lyric, released their song “Eottae” (“What about”) in 2017 singing in Korean (General, 2017).

Although they do not speak the Korean language, they practiced singing in Korean a lot in order to be a K-pop group. The two members of CoCo Avenue are inspired by many K-pop groups and musicians such as Super Junior, , and Wonder Girls. CoCo Avenue, however, has different features from them. For example, unlike those groups who are manufactured by their company, CoCo Avenue is not a manufactured group. As a mass-produced art forms, K-pop is highly related to a star system in the same way the beginnings of contemporary stardom are

56 associated with the advent of mass production (Buckley, p. 366). In conjunction with its efficiency, the trainee system deeply rooted in the K-pop industry is considered a certain way to create a star. In order to become a K-pop artist today, it is imperative to participate in auditions held by K-pop agencies and get through the trainee system. CoCo Avenue, however, is a self- formed female duo and the two members did not participate in the trainee system.

After Lyric posted her aspiration of being a K-pop star on her Facebook, CoCo Avenue quickly formed with other people who have an analogous interest (Sokol, 2016). At first, it was a

6-member group and finally became an African American female duo. Since they were obsessed with K-pop idol stars, they wanted to become a K-pop idol group at first. However, after they noticed some stereotypes of their African American culture in the K-pop field, they changed their minds to contribute to the positive image of in the Korean music industry. As an illustration, Lyric said “At this point, our goal is to be the positive image of black people in the Korean music industry. We have developed a sound and image that fits who we are and we don’t plan to try and mould ourselves into K-pop idols” (Dahir, 2017).

When it comes to the outward aspects of an artist, the two members of CoCo Avenue have different opinions from other K-pop artists. Many K-pop artists and applicants today withstand a rigorous diet and willingly undergo plastic surgery in order to appeal to audiences.

For instance, one of the members of female K-pop group Ladies’ Code, Sojung, says that she only eats one orange, 15 cherry tomatoes, and one piece of sweet pumpkin in a day (Doo, 2016).

Rose and Lyric, however, decline such efforts at artificial beauty. Rose states, “We aren’t trying to fit a Korean standard of beauty. We don’t want to lose weight. We don’t want pale skin, or perfect faces. We want to be 100% who we are, and do what we love, and encourage a few people along the way” (Dahir, 2017). This aspect is a distinct feature of them because K-pop

57 agencies force their trainees and artists to lose weight and they willingly follow what their company suggests. Two members of CoCo Avenue, as African Americans, focus more on expressing their own culture in the K-pop field instead of being idol pop stars.

What language is utilized in lyrics is a significant element to discuss music and the musician’s identity. This is because language is an inevitable element regarding people’s daily life and communication. Furthermore, according to Holt (2007), popular “have a more direct relation with everyday life and emerge from a wide array of contemporary lifestyles and social formations” (p. 6). It indicates that lyrics in popular music are significant elements to look at not only music, but also people’s life (or musician’s). Since CoCo Avenue’s recent song

“Eottae” is an R&B style song, which is a popular music genre in K-pop, and sung in the Korean language, it is too hard to figure out prominent differences from other K-pop songs sung by

Korean musicians. Although there are English lyrics and rap parts in this song, it cannot make an extrusive difference because a lot of K-pop songs also have those parts. For this reason, it seems indisputable that “Eottae” is a K-pop song. However, this does not entirely make CoCo Avenue

K-pop artists because of their race. Two members of CoCo Avenue imply that they cannot perfectly get into the K-pop field because of the fact that they are different from typical K-pop musicians in racial aspects (Sokol, 2016). Rose said, “I think the reason why blackface and appropriation are such a big problem in Korea is because the African-American voice in the

Korean entertainment industry is so small” (Dahir, 2017). Nevertheless, their existence proves that K-pop can be a music genre in which diverse races are interwoven. In terms of possibility to be taken seriously as a K-pop artist, they are optimistic and point out the K-pop industry’s responsibility. According to them:

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Yes, we sing in Korean, but we’re not going to start dancing around in ,

bleaching our skin and claiming Korean as our own, absolutely not. We are

simply being ourselves, bringing our culture to K-pop. At the same time, there’s

responsibility to be held on the K-pop industry’s side. How long will they draw

influences from our culture, many times incorrectly, while continuing to perpetuate

stereotypes on what black Americans are and not allow us to have a voice in this? (Sokol,

2016)

They chose K-pop in order to express themselves and encourage other people who are interested in being a K-pop musicians. As white performers in the blues genre led new aesthetic of blues

(Herrick, p. 20), CoCo Avenue’s attempt might be able to lead a new aesthetic of K-pop in the transcultural scene.

A male K-pop group, EXP Edition (Experiment Edition), also consists of “all” non-

Korean members from different parts of the world. EXP Edition started as the thesis project of a graduate student, Kim Bora, at Columbia University in . While she was working on her Master’s degrees in Fine Arts, she planned to make a K-pop boy group with all non-

Koreans. In an interview with O’Connor (2017), she says that:

I wanted to see what would happen if I made American boys into K-pop performers, by

teaching them how to sing in Korean and act like Korean boys, and complicate this

flow/appropriation even more, since I’m in New York, where so many talents are just one

online recruitment ad away. (Independent, 2017)

To be specific, in terms of her interest in and reason for making a K-pop group with all non-

Koreans, she says that, “I was thinking about cultural flow, or the relationship of dominant

59 culture and peripheral culture, and how that is interwoven with one’s identity or one’s national identity” (, 2017).

She held an audition in the U.S. in 2014 and ultimately chose the four men out of 2,000 applicants (Kim, 2017). At the first time, EXP Edition started with six non-Korean members; now there are four members, Frankie from Portugal, Sime from Croatia, and both Hunter and

Koki from the U.S. These four members were fashion models and musical actors in New York before they became members of EXP Edition. They released their first debut song “Luv/Wrong”, in New York in 2015. Two years later, they officially debuted in Korea by releasing “Feel Like

This” (KBS World TV, 2017). At the beginning of 2018, EXP Edition released their second single track, “Stress”, in Korea.

After its debut, EXP Edition also encountered many criticisms from the audiences of K- pop because of their otherness. Many people denounce the fact that EXP Edition promotes themselves as a K-pop group by pointing out the absence of a Korean member and their insufficient Korean pronunciation; all songs of EXP Edition are sung in Korean and English lyrics so far and they use more Korean lyrics as time goes on. Based on what I experienced in the

K-pop field, EXP Edition is experiencing the same things as many other K-pop groups. To be specific, EXP Edition is a boy group manufactured by their producer. Four members live together in lodging provided by their agency. Even though some people pointed out that EXP

Edition did not undergo a rigorous training program before they debuted, the four members of

EXP Edition are taking several dance and Korean language classes from trainers in Korea. In addition, whenever they meet sónbae in broadcasting stations in Korea, they do a 90-degrees bow in order to express their decorum as a hubae, which is what many K-pop rookies do.

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Despite the fact that many things they do are the same as the actions of other K-pop groups, 90% of respondents said that EXP Edition is not a K-pop group (Min, Joins, 2017).

People’s responses are mainly hostile and biting even though there are several supportive comments. For instance, “hey just want to update you guys the exp is still trash”

(@expeditionanti, 2017), “Their pronunciation sounds like a toothless old man in my hometown,

Daegu,” “I’d rather listen to translate,” and “MY EARS ARE BLEEDING” (KBS World

TV, 2017). EXP Edition members even encounter racist comments. According to comments for their song “Feel Like This” on YouTube (EXP EDITION TV, 2017), for instance, people said that “This is the definition of bullshit” (Iva S, 2017), “white people ruining shit once again”

(水木敏郎, 2018), “Get out” (LeBelle, 2018). As such, many global audiences of K-pop are hostile regarding EXP Edition’s credibility as a K-pop group. Apart from EXP Edition’s nationality and race, some people also “criticized the performance quality by asking why the band did not incorporate any choreography, which is an iconic element to K-pop” (Yam, 2017).

One thing, however, is clear in that EXP Edition somewhat has success in a way of thinking that they get people’s attention whether positive or negative. Their existence as a K-pop group might be problematic to some people because EXP Edition does not satisfy certain aspects of defining

K-pop people made. Nevertheless, it is undeniable that EXP Edition, in the same way that Reid brings racial issues to the K-pop field, also brings racial issues not only into such a mono-ethnic society, but also into the discourse of K-pop today.

The meaning of non-Korean musicians in the K-pop field is not confined to the discourse of K-pop, but Korean society today. By encountering K-pop groups consisting of all non-

Koreans, global K-pop fans and Korean people are able to have a chance to think about a diversity in K-pop and Korean society. Appadurai (2013) points out that “global cultural flows

61 have a curious inner contradiction, since they create some of the obstacles to their own freedom of movement and strangely self-regulate the ease with which they cross cultural boundaries”

(p.65). In conjunction with diverse languages and races, K-pop today is an example of the global cultural flows having many impediments and inner contractions regarding things understood to be non-Korean, which is trickier to define than at first may seem obvious.

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CHAPTER THREE: JAMBINAI AND 2ND MOON

In order to precisely examine K-pop today, it is also significant to look at diverse musical genres in conjunction with diverse races and languages. For a long time, the majority of Korean popular songs were dance-oriented music. Targeting faithful teenage fans, K-pop agencies have eagerly produced numerous dance idol groups since the middle of the 1990s. Korean youth fans, normally female, are the main consumer group of dance-oriented idol music from the H.O.T era to the present. Because of the fact that many K-pop groups have been standardized since

H.O.T.’s debut, it is taken for granted that each group would have rappers, vocalists, and sub- vocalists, which means that almost all songs of idol music have rap parts in their songs. In the same vein, African genres such as hip-hop and R&B are subsequently the second most popular in Korea. Hip-hop also has its own faithful fan base. Specifically, TV music programs focusing only on hip-hop music, Show Me the Money, Gogyo Rapper (“High

School Rapper”), and Unpretty Rapstar, are not only considered successful TV programs, but also influential to the popular music field in Korea. Contestants’ songs from these programs will often be released after they have been broadcasted on TV. These songs normally rank high on domestic music charts.

However, it does not mean that there is merely dance and hip-hop oriented music genre in

K-pop. Although diverse music genres have not been focused on as much as dance idol groups’ music, they have received people’s attention. For example, whenever Kim Dong-ryul, a male ballad singer-songwriter, releases his new album, his songs rank high on the popular music chart.

BuskerBusker is another example of a non-dance and non-hip-hop oriented successful music group. When BuskerBusker debuted in 2013, people from the old generation to the young generation in Korea loved them. To the old generation, their music and vocal sound reminded

63 them of folk popular music sounds similar to the impact of Bob Dylan in the 1970s and 80s. To the young generation, BuskerBusker was something different from common idol music, but not exotic due to the TV audition program, Superstar K—BuskerBusker attended this program in

2011 and won the second place. As such, there is a desire for musical diversity. Diverse music genres are also loved by Korean music consumers, which means that idol dance music cannot sate all people’s various musical preferences. In addition, indie bands recently, such as

MeloMance and Jang Duk Cheol, have often ranked higher than manufactured groups, such as

TWICE and BTS, on local music charts.

This chapter explores a different non-dance-oriented style of K-pop music focusing on two groups, Jambinai and 2nd Moon. Unlike many K-pop groups and indie bands mentioned above, these two groups combine traditional Korean elements with Western popular music features. Jambinai and 2nd Moon are perfect examples of “how popular music using traditional elements is currently located outside the mainstream of Korean pop music” (Kwon, p. 166).

Based on my personal experiences as well as musical analysis, I investigate them in this chapter

— my personal experiences mean, in this case, not only what I saw and observed in the K-pop industry, but also what I felt when I performed with 2nd Moon in 2014 as a guest musician.

Furthermore, I, as a researcher, conducted interviews with them email to clarify their thoughts and opinions. As an outsider and partial insider, I delve into what distinguishes them from other common K-pop groups including manufactured groups and indie groups.

Jambinai is a rock-oriented popular music group using traditional Korean musical elements. The majority of their songs incline toward a post-rock sound. 2nd Moon mainly plays

Irish traditional music and is now working on a gugak (traditional Korean music) project with

64 pansori4 singers. Some people might think that my subjects are not K-pop groups because both groups are different from other typical dance-oriented idol groups in many ways. However, I argue that their perspective is too narrow to define K-pop because the term “K-pop” does not represent only one genre (dance-oriented music). In the same vein, K-pop does not represent a certain form and appearance, such as a form of a group having attractive youthful musicians.

There are a lot of exceptions when people define K-pop today. For instance, “some Japanese K- pop fans are adamant that K-pop does not include Psy, because they consider him neither cool nor handsome” (Lie, 2015, p. 96). Today, however, Psy is considered a typical K-pop musician by many audiences and critics (S. Jung, p. 52).

Although many people agree that K-pop is Korean popular music, there is no settled definition of K-pop yet. In his book, Lie (2015) states that “K-pop, as we have seen, is a commercial product, an output of the South Korean culture industry that seeks to satisfy consumers” (p. 140). In addition, he (2012) argues that the K in K-pop is a “nearly empty signifier” and “merely a brand” (p. 361). An ethnomusicologist, Michael Fuhr, focuses more on the globalization phenomenon. He (2017) says that:

K-pop is the soundtrack (and K-pop idols are the faces) of Korea’s globalization process

in the new millennium. Its most popular representatives are boy and girl groups and

dance pop acts that show many similarities with their counterpart in mainstream Western

pop music in terms of aural and visual representation, performance, habitus, and

mediation. (p. 8)

4 “From a cultural perspective, is the quintessential Korean traditional performing art. It is a musical drama consisting of two performers – a singer or soloist (sorikkun or gwangdae) and a drummer (gosu) […] The singer represents all the characters in the themed story through variations in tone and pitch. The drummer enhances the excitement of the performance with rhythmic sounds and words” (, p. 2-3).

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In the same vein, a media scholar, Kim Chang-nam, focuses on a specific time period as well as specific . Kim (2012) describes about the term “K-pop”

It began to be used in Japan in the early 2000s when Korean popular music first came to

attention across East Asia, including in that country […] This means that K-pop is both a

product of transnational practices and a global term referring comprehensively to not

simply the popular music produced by the Korean music industry and consumed

overseas, but to related cultural phenomenon as well. (p. 8-9)

The term “K-pop” can be problematic in that it is not widely used in Korea when Koreans refer to popular music. Koreans have a specific term referring to popular music, daejung gayo

(대중가요, popular music) or gayo (가요, a simplified term for popular music) — Koreans are prone to use the term “K-pop” when they refer to Korean popular music for the global music market. Considerations of certain aspects, such as nationality, language, and pervasive musical genre, might help define K-pop. However, K-pop is still a problematic term because of the fact that many K-pop groups, as we have discussed earlier, even have non-Korean musicians and sing in non-Korean languages. Such phenomena also raise questions about K-pop’s authenticity. By pointing out the lack of authenticity, autonomy, and originality, Lie (2015) argues that there is no authenticity in the discourse of K-pop. He states:

K-pop is inauthentic in that it is neither Korean nor South Korean. Not only is it different

from traditional Korean music, it also diverges from the long tradition of Korean popular

music. But most K-pop fans don't care about that kind of inauthenticity. Rather, the kind

of inauthenticity that might concern a K-pop fan is the kind associated with phoniness,

that foible identified and excoriated in J.D. Salinger’s 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye

but more completely articulated by Lionel Trilling and Charles Taylor. (p. 140-141)

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As such, the term “K-pop” and its extent are controversial and essentially debated. Nevertheless, the reason why I argue that these two groups, Jambinai and 2nd Moon, are K-pop is that they meet two basic aspects of the term K-pop; “Korean” and “Popular.” When it comes to defining of popular music, in his book Popular Musics of the Non-, Peter Manuel (1988) mentions that “[t]he most important distinguishing feature of popular music is its close relationship with the . Popular music […] is disseminated primarily through them, and is embedded in a music industry based on marketing of recordings on a mass commodity basis” (p. 4). Jambinai and 2nd Moon are both musical groups not only consisting of all Korean musicians, but also aiming to appeal to common audiences through mass media. For example, both groups participated in several TV drama original (OST) in conjunction with other popular musicians in Korea — Jambinai participated in Rebel: Thief Who Stole the People

OST in 2017 and 2nd Moon participated in many TV dramas’ OST including The Legend of the

Blue Sea in 2017, Love in the Moonlight in 2016, Princess Hours in 2006, Bad Family in 2006, and Ireland in 2004.

In Korea, soap opera is one of the most influential popular culture genres. Only very famous actors and actresses can star in soap operas as protagonists. In conjunction with K-pop,

Korean soap opera occupies the biggest part of Hallyu. For example, typical Korean dramas,

Winter Sonata (2002) and (2003), led the development of hallyu in the beginning of the 2000s. When it comes to influences of TV dramas, Jin (2016) mentions that

“Due to the rapidly growing popularity of these [TV drama] programs, the total value of Korean television program exports increased by as much as 27.4 times between 1995 and 2007, up from

$5.5 million in 1995 to $151 million in 2007 […] Many actors and actresses, including Yong

Joon Bae, Ji-Woo Choi, Young Ae Lee, Jae Wook , Byung- Lee, Min-ho Lee, Ji-hyung

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Jen, and Soo-hun Kim, have become Asian stars” (p. 48). Therefore, for musicians, participating in soap operas’ OST is conducive to promoting their songs to other countries. TV dramas whose

OST Jambinai and 2nd Moon participated in were also exported to other countries. Specifically,

Princess Hours, which 2nd Moon participated in, was exported to 23 countries including mainland China, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam, , and Japan (Seo, 2006).

Based on their popularity in , Jambinai has performed in global music markets from 2014 to the present. “From May to July, the band toured 14 countries in Europe, appearing in a handful of renowned music festivals including the in England, it has also performed at South by Southwest in the and WOMEX in Wales” (Lee,

The Korea Herald, 2014). In his column, a professor at George Mason University in Korea, Lee

Gyu-tag, states that exoticism is the main reason why global fans from non-Asian areas consume

Korean popular music and Jambinai is a successful example of K-pop as an “alternative music

()” in non-Asian areas that can satisfy audiences’ appetite for exoticism (Pressian,

2018). I wonder how Jambinai members themselves think about being labeled as K-pop by other people. Three members say that:

We don’t care about how other people refer to us. We might be one of the K-pop bands

because we are all Korean musicians. And some people in Europe consider us as a

different style of K-pop. Some fans started to listen to K-pop idol groups’ music and

become our fans. But we are not sure that Jambinai is alternative of K-pop idol groups

because we are not popular as much as they are. We just want to be called “Jambinai

music” rather than other terms. (B. Kim, I. Lee, E. Shim, personal email communication

translated by the author, January 25, 2018)

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Although Jambinai members are not sure that they can adequately represent K-pop, they do not disagree that other people refer to them as K-pop.

2nd Moon also showed up on several TV programs, such as Top Band 3 and Immortal

Song 2: Singing the Legend. Moreover, in one of his interviews, a leader of 2nd Moon, Kim

Hyun-bo, insinuates that 2nd Moon could be a K-pop group. He says that:

The reason why K-pop idol groups are popular in the world is that non-Korean audiences

are fascinated by the way that Korean audiences relish their popular music by singing and

dancing it. In the same vein, no one is interested in our music if we do not relish it. There

is a lot of fun in gugak. Our gugak project aims to reveal that hidden fun to the global

audience. (Park, Yonhapnews, 2018) [Author’s translation.]

Based on these points, I consider them a K-pop group despite the different style, and I examine the musical diversity of K-pop focusing on four songs; “They Keep Silence” and “Time of

Extinction” by Jambinai, and “Sarang-ga” (“Love Song”) and “Eosa Chooldoo” (“Here Comes the Royal Inspector”), by 2nd Moon.

Jambinai As Another K-pop

Unlike common K-pop groups, Jambinai is a self-formed K-pop band. Three members,

Lee Il-woo, Kim Bo-mi, and Shim Eun-yong, started the group in 2009; Jambinai officially added bassist Byung-goo and drummer Choi Jae-hyuk in 2017. Lee, Kim, and Shim were classmates at the Korea National University of Arts and they play traditional Korean instruments: Kim Bo-mi plays the haegeum fiddle, Shim Eun-yong plays the geomungo zither, and Lee Il-woo plays not only and taepyeongso (types of Korean wind instruments) but also electric guitar. According to Lee, they are interested in the possibility of traditional Korean music as a public genre: “All of us are trained in gugak instruments and performed individually

69 for some years. We had this growing thirst for music through which we can communicate with the people of our generation. We wanted to prove that with our instruments we can do contemporary music” (Lee, 2014). To be specific, Kim says that:

We amalgamate Western musical instruments in order to overcome musical and popular

limitations of gugak. I was fascinated by gugak by myself and I assumed that other

people could be fascinated in the same way. But many people were bored of gugak. It

was shocking to me. I realized that gugak is not a popular music genre when I was in

middle school […] After I entered college, I was sad because I met same the people like

family, relatives, and friends again and again in concert halls. I was wondering why

people are bored of gugak. I think the reason is a musical limitation of gugak. Whereas

people today in Korea live in Westernized society in many aspects, gugak stagnated in

the style of the end of Joseon Dynasty (1392-1897). I thought that someone has to play

ongoing music instead of stagnation whereas it is also important to maintain traditions.

(B. Kim, personal email communication, January 25, 2018)

I asked them if they have any stereotypes of Western popular music genres derived from their gugak specialties. All members say that “we do not have any biases or stereotypes in terms of Western popular music.” According to them, two members of Jambinai, Lee and Kim, even started music with piano and choir rather than gugak when they were young. Furthermore, when it comes to biases, Lee points out “many Koreans today are more familiar with Western popular music rather than gugak. They rather have biases and stereotypes of gugak” (I. Lee, personal email communication, January 25, 2018). In one interview, three members of Jambinai mention that they have been influenced by diverse music genres including not only Korean popular music of the 1990s, for example, Seo Taiji, H.O.T and later on g.o.d., but also Western .

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Lee, specifically, reveals that he has been influenced by Western bands and Nine Inch

Nails. He states that “I felt a strong desire to play the guitar when I was in the third year of middle school after watching a video of Metallica’s concert. I was so impressed. It was amazing to see them perform in front of a huge crowd. I practiced the piri in the daytime and played the guitar at night” ( TV, 2017).

Musical Features of Jambinai. In musical perspective, Jambinai has distinguished features in many ways. For example, Jambinai has officially released 20 songs since its debut in

2010 — apart from Rebel: Thief Who Stole the People OST in 2017, they released three albums,

Jambinai in 2010, Difference in 2015, and A Hermitage in 2016. The majority of the songs they released have odd meters, such as 3/4, 5/4, 7/8, and 9/8. Some songs such as “They Keep

Silence” and “Time of Extinction” I analyzed have a metric modulation. Moreover, there are songs such as “Empty Pupil, Pt. 1”, which is expressed in no time signature. Among their songs they released so far, 2018, only six songs are in fixed 4/4 meter. When it comes to erratic rhythm meters, Kim states “gugak has more diverse rhythmic features than Western music. Many

Western musicians are curious when we appropriate small parts of rhythmic features of the traditional Korean music” (B. Kim, personal email communication, January 25, 2018). Two songs of Jambinai, “They Keep Silence” and “Time of Extinction,” are in odd meters and metric modulation. For example, “They Keep Silence” released in 2017 starts with geomungo’s riff in

3/4.

Figure 6. The geomungo riff of “They Keep Silence” (transcription by the author).

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After finishing the second verse part, this song changes the time signature from 3/4 to 4/4 and

5/4. This feature originates from a combination of Korean and Western music ; traditional Korean music mainly utilizes 3/4 meter, whereas Western popular music mainly uses

4/4 meter. By using odd-meters, Jambinai expresses their musical distinctiveness.

Figure 7. Metric modulation part of “They Keep Silence” (transcription by the author).

Another song, “Time of Extinction”, released in 2015, also starts geomungo’s riff in 3/4.

Electric guitar and haegeum are added after the geomungo intro part. When the electric guitar and haegeum are added, drums and electric bass guitar are also added together. While the first part of this song repeats, Shim constantly plays the riff. At first, the geomungo riff sounds like a

4/4 pattern because of the notes’ grouping. However, in fact, this riff is in 3/4.

Figure 8. The geomungo riff and drum pattern of “Time of Extinction”

(transcription by the author).

After finishing the first part, this song changes the time signature from 3/4 to 4/4.

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Figure 9. 4/4 time signature part of “Time of Extinction” (transcription by the author).

When it comes to rhythm formation of “They Keep Silence” and “Time of Extinction,” Jambinai is different from other dance-oriented K-pop artists. They often use odd meters and metric modulation. Such erratic rhythm formations are uncommon in the K-pop idol groups because they barely make a comfortable environment to dance.

In the chord progressions, Jambinai is also apparently different from other K-pop songs.

They often utilize one chord progression rather than multiple chord progressionx. For example, a verse part of “They Keep Silence” is played over a Bm chord.

Figure 10. A vocal melody and chord progression in a verse of “They Keep Silence”

(transcription by the author).

After the verse part, Jambinai plays a Bm chord in other parts of the song.

Both songs are composed by Lee Il-woo. According to Lee, he wrote “They Keep

Silence” to express people’s resentment in the aftermath of the Sewol Ferry disaster, which is the

73 worst maritime accident in Korean history, killing 304 people senselessly in 2014. Lee clarifies that “many artists sing about how sad they are and make songs to comfort the victims and people. But, no one releases a song about how mad they are. I felt like that I, as an artist and citizen, needed to talk about it, so I decided to write it” (I. Lee, personal email communication,

January 25, 2018). Lee says that he was inspired by the open string sound of geomungo. That is a main reason he wrote “Time of Extinction.” In addition, Kim states that “Time of Extinction” is the first song in which Jambinai members aggressively utilize rhythm part (B. Kim, I. Lee, personal email communication, January 25, 2018).

When it comes to performance, we can recognize different features of Jambinai. Even though two members of Jambinai, Kim and Shim, mainly play Korean traditional instruments, their performance styles are totally different from “Korean traditional musicians.” While traditional geomungo and haegeum players play the instruments gently and placidly, Jambinai members play the instrument by , which can be shown in heavy metal performances.

Below figures present their distinctions.

Figure 11. Comparison of traditional geomungo player with Shim Eun-yong of Jambinai

(left photograph from and right one from Jambinai’s performance at

Trans Musicales of Rennes in 2014).

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Figure 12. Comparison of traditional haegeum player with Kim Bo-mi of Jambinai

(left photograph from Kim and right one from Jambinai’s performance at SXSW in 2016).

Specifically, when Shim plays the geomungo, she often approaches it in a different way, such as she plays the geomungo as a percussive instrument, not a string family instrument.

Geomungo has sixteen gue(s) which function as a prop, similar to the fret(s) of the guitar. In general, geomungo players do not use these parts when they make sounds. Shim, however, often uses these parts by smacking when Jambinai makes different sounds. Furthermore, Shim and

Kim use various sound effectors, which are normally utilized by electric guitarists, when they play their traditional instruments. Through this, they aim to create a new sound.

Unlike the majority of K-pop artists who aim to follow Western popular music sounds,

Jambinai tries to make a new sound by combining Western and Korean sounds in their music.

Their exertion is an example of postcolonialism in that they resist stagnated traditional Korean music and the reckless acceptance of Western culture. In cultural postcolonialism, people resist blindly following and accepting Western culture. According to Bhabha (2001):

The postcolonial perspective departs from the traditions of the sociology of

underdevelopment or “dependency” theory. As a mode of analysis, it attempts to revise

those nationalist or “nativist” pedagogies that set up the relation of Third World and First

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World in a binary structure of opposition. The postcolonial perspective resists the attempt

at holistic form of social explanation. (p. 191)

Utilizing traditional Korean and Western popular musical aspects, Jambinai breaks up the cultural border between Korean (Eastern) and Western. These distinct features firmed Jambinai’s musical identity. Jambinai also says that it is the main reason they can appeal to global audiences. Lee Il-woo states that “I think the reason why Jambinai is so popular because we mix heavy metal and gugak so well together. The fact that we firmly established our identity and distinguished ourselves from other groups also opened doors to perform abroad” (Arirang TV,

2017). People who saw their performance or video admired their novel sound.

According to YouTube (JAMBINAI 잠비나이 Official, 2016, Apr 14) comments, many people focus on unexpected sounds and instruments. For example, “i’ve not heard anything like this . This is absolutely superb” (Vonzaku, 2016), “Could anyone tell me what’s the name of that one-stringed instrument?” (MsCacaguete, 2016), “You’re awesome. I hope see you in Poland” (dohaeng82, 2017), “I saw you guys on TV news in , just hearing the sound of your music for 10 seconds made me believe you were the kind of band I love to listen to; you have just proven me right! What you do is amazing, I hope you will gain more recognition!”

(Marianne Dos Reis, 2017), “What an amazing underrated band! now that is what you call art please continue to make masterpieces Love from Cairo<3 [sic]” (Jessy Mor, 2017), and “That was awesome, and it was just as good live when I saw you at The Great Escape, . Come to the UK again please !!!!!” (nick w, 2017).

Some people even argue that Jambinai is better than other K-pop groups and should represent K-pop. As an illustration, “I was in their concert yesterday in Algeria and it was just…

PERFECT I thought that it was much better than the pop that everyone like better than exo

76 and all others it’s just Powerfull Thanks for this perfection<3 #Fan [sic]” (ouaddour rania, 2017),

“Great music. Jamabanai [sic] is the only serious ‘magnifique’ thing I know from South Korea”

(elbichopolaco, 2017), and “This is much better than PSY” (Dwi Aji, 2017). Jambinai’s music is not an Oriental music or Western popular music to them; the band makes their own sound.

Traditional Korean music and Western musical features coexist in their song and performances.

Newness exists in various ways in Jambinai’s music. This aspect is the strongest attraction of

Jambinai’s music. As a different style of K-pop, Jambinai expands the range of K-pop in the world.

2nd Moon

2nd Moon is also a self-formed band. At first, this band consisted of eight musicians:

Kim Hyun-bo (various instruments, including guitar, mandolin, Irish whistle, bodhràn), Park Jin- woo (bass), Choi Jin-kyung (piano, keyboard, and accordion), Baek Sun-yeol (drums and percussion), Jo - (violin), Park Hye-ri (vocals, Irish whistle, and accordion), Lynda

Cullen (vocals), and Valtinho Anastàcio (percussion). After three members, Park Hye-ri, Cullen, and Anastàcio, quit the band in 2012, 2nd Moon has consisted of six musicians including a new member, Lee Young-hoon (guitar). This band commenced with a suggestion by Kim Hyun-bo.

When he was working for a music company for adverts along with Park Jin-woo and Choi, he suggested that they make a band in 2003. Other members, Baek and Jo, were introduced by acquaintances. A guitarist, Lee Young-hoon, was basically a high school friend of Choi and took part in 2nd Moon’s first album as a session guitarist. Choi asked him to join the band and Lee officially became a member of 2nd Moon.

After their songs were featured in the TV drama Ireland, as I mentioned above, in 2004,

2nd Moon obtained important exposure and opportunities to introduce their music to the public.

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Kim says, “Once back in 2003, we had just 5 people in the audience. However, once our music was featured on the TV series Ireland people started queuing to enter our gigs and we couldn’t even fit them all into the performing venues” (Arirang TV, 2016). Taking advantage of this momentum, 2nd Moon released their first album, 2nd Moon in 2005. Since then, 2nd Moon has released a total of three regular albums; 2nd Moon in 2005, How have you been? in 2015, and

Pansori: Chunhyang-ga in 2016.

As an indie band in the K-pop field, 2nd Moon is different from other manufactured K- pop groups in the way of creating an album. When I participated in the recording of the fifth album of a renowned female singer, Lee Hyo-ri, a number of people were involved. Apart from other parts such as video, photography, album design, hair/makeup, and fashion, there were still a lot of people in the music part for creating her new album. Not only as a drummer, but also as a part of the music staff, I was able to look closely at a typical album production process of K-pop.

Lee Hyo-ri and her producer, Kim Ji-woong, asked a lot of and bands for unpublished songs. They gathered songs not only from famous composers, but also bands. In addition, they received a number of songs from other countries via global music conglomerates such as SONY Music, Universal Music, and Warner Music. From what I heard, around 500 songs were gathered — On her fifth album, Monochrome, 2013, there are 16 songs including a song she composed. After they chose the songs to be included, they asked arrangers, lyricists, and session players in order to complete recording. In the final step, they worked with a mixing engineer and a engineer to complete album production. Although such a procedure and details would change depending on the style of the artist, I experienced a similar process in other

K-pop projects that I participated in.

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However, 2nd Moon covers every process of album production themselves when they produce their album. According to Jo, “we handled everything on our own from the beginning till the end with no guest musicians or technicians” (Arirang TV, 2016). As I mentioned, I also participated in 2nd Moon’s performance as a guest musician in 2014. I visited their practice room in Seoul’s Mapo district. Although it is not big enough, there were various musical instruments and digital interface (MIDI) equipment there. At that time, they were working on their second regular album How have you been? I asked them where they recorded and mixed their songs; I did not ask where they gathered songs because I knew that they compose their songs on their own. They said that “we do everything in this place.” I was surprised because I thought that they would go somewhere to record and mix their music. That small place was a practice room, recording studio, and mixing / mastering studio.

The Gugak Project. The gugak project of 2nd Moon commenced in 2014 after they performed with a fusion gugak band, Coreyah, at the Yeo-woo-rak festival. According to Kim,

“We performed original pansori pieces with our own twist to create a new kind of music. So we talked about it in September and held that performance in October. Over the month, we produced

5 or 6 songs, which became the basis for the album Pansori: Chunhyang-ga, with 14 songs”

(Arirang TV, 2016).

I performed with 2nd Moon while they were in the midst of the gugak project. My hubae

(junior colleague), Jo Yun-jeong of 2nd Moon, asked me if I could play the drums for one of their performances. She said that 2nd Moon’s drummer could not play the drums at that time because of a family affair. I was willing to accept her request and played the drums for their performance. At the first meeting for practice, I did not expect that I could meet a pansori singer for 2nd Moon’s performance. I was just informed that I should get ready to play several pieces

79 by 2nd Moon. I realized that I did not need to know about the pansori singer because 2nd Moon was trying to amalgamate their music with a pansori piece.

After I and the 2nd Moon members started to play one of their pieces, “Uhrum Yonmot”

(“Ice Pond”), a pansori singer, Lee Bong-geun, subsequently sang a typical traditional Korean folk song, “Eebyul-ga” (Farewell Song) based on our Western-style accompaniment. It was a totally different experience from what I had before performed along with other fusion gugak musicians and teams such as Kang Eun-il haegeum Plus. If the fusion gugak team, Kang Eun-il haegeum Plus, focuses on expressing Western melody and using traditional Korean instruments, 2nd Moon’s gugak project focuses more on how they can support pansori to express its contents well (H. Kim, personal email communication, March 1, 2018).

Figure 13. A performance with 2nd Moon at Jeongdong in 2014

(from left to right; the author, Kim Hyun-bo, Lee Young-hoon, Lee Bong-geun, Park Jin-woo,

Choi Jin-Kyung, and Jo Yun-jeong, photo from YouTube capture).

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As a researcher, I conducted an interview with 2nd Moon members to clarify the purpose of the gugak project and whether they experienced any hardships resulting from differences between traditional Korean music and Western music. When it comes to the purpose of the project, Kim says, “It is meaningful to habituate gugak in our daily life. In addition, it is a

Ocean, which means we can make our unique sound in this project” (H. Kim, personal email communication, March 1, 2018).

Many K-pop artists with whom I have worked tried to find something new, including unique sounds, visual concepts, even promotion tactics. For example, Lee Hyo-ri appropriated retro visual concepts such as the fashion styles of Supremes, Audrey Hepburn, and Farrah

Fawcett in the 1960s and 70s into her music video “Miss Korea” in 2013. This song is musically based on jazzy acoustic sounds. Since many K-pop fans remember rocking fierce hip- hop and dance sounds in her former songs, her attempts in “Miss Korea” are considered as something new for many K-pop fans. Another K-pop artist, Lee Min-woo, who is a member of the boy group Shinhwa, also always tries to find uniqueness whenever he creates his album. I recall when I worked for his concert in 2009, that one day he suddenly visited the session musicians’ waiting room to discuss his new album concept and sound with other musicians. He brought several music videos, concert videos, and songs of Western musicians, Ne-Yo, Justin

Timberlake, and Beyoncé. I and other musicians talked about music videos and songs he brought. Specifically, he asked session musicians regarding some parts of Ne-Yo’s songs as a motive for his new song. Also, he and the session musicians, including me, talked about some part of Beyoncé’s concert, such as blindfolded drum solo, as items for his concert. In this way, many K-pop artists I worked with try to find uniqueness from other popular music in the world.

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2nd Moon, on the other hand, finds it in the traditional Korean music genre to appeal to the public.

I speculate that 2nd Moon might have hardships in this project because of the fact that there is an evident difference between traditional Korean music and Western music. To be specific, traditional Korean music has a different scale system from Western music — Two essential and basic modes in Korean Traditional Music are called gyemyeonjo (sad style) and ujo

(majestic), both use a five-pitch scale without semitones, or an anhemitonic5 pentatonic scale

(Suh, 2013). I asked 2nd Moon how to overcome such hardships. Kim said that:

We try to play the instruments to support that traditional Korean content can be conveyed

well as itself. Whenever we make sound with pansori pieces, we often encounter certain

parts in which 2nd Moon and a pansori singer need to adjust. In order to overcome such

parts, we utilize a harmony as much as we can open, for example, using the dominant 7th

chord in Blues music that can embraces many notes. Also, the pansori singer sometimes

has to sing in an unfamiliar key. (J. Choi, personal email communication, March 1, 2018)

In the same vein, the majority of songs I performed with them in the gugak project were in 3/4,

6/8, and 12/8 meters because it was a conducive way to dwindle differences between gugak and

Western popular music; many pieces of gugak have an odd time formation as I mentioned above.

In the Pansori: Chunhyang-ga album, all songs are in odd time except three songs out of fourteen.

For the theme of the first album of the gugak project, 2nd Moon chose Chunhyang-ga, a very famous folk story in Korea — it is a kind of romantic love story between a girl and boy who

5 “A scale with no semitones, i.e. one of the four pentatonic scales or a whole-tone scale” (Latham, p. 46).

82 have a social class gap. The girl, named Chunhyang, endures adversity and faithfully waits for her lover, named Mongryong, to return. Since Chunhyang-ga is the most famous pansori piece, it is reproduced in various popular culture, including musicals, films, TV dramas, and animated films in Korea. According to Jo, audiences are more enthusiastic at the performances of the gugak project than other 2nd Moon performances. “Many people sing along when we play famous parts of Chunhyang-ga, ‘Sarang-ga’” (Y. Jo, personal email communication, March 1,

2018).

“Sarang-ga” (Love Song) expresses Mongryong and Chunhyang’s love in cute, sweet, and lively ways. In 2nd Moon’s version of “Sarang-ga” (Love Song), 2nd Moon appropriates 3/4 jazz waltz style accompaniment by utilizing a guitar, accordion, mandolin, violin, double bass, and drums. The lyrics of “Sarang-ga” are the same as a traditional version, whereas the accompaniment style is totally different. I played this song in a similar way to playing other jazz waltz pieces in medium tempo such as Bill Evans’ “Alice in Wonderland” by utilizing a brush stick. This song commences with a guitar comping. While a guitarist is playing chord comping, a sorikkun (pansori singer) starts a narration in order to explain the relationship between two main characters, Chunhyang and Mongryong.

Figure 14. The guitar comping in the introduction of “Sarang-ga” (transcription by the author).

After finishing a brief intro part, the first verse part gets started and other instruments subsequently are added from the second half of the verse part. Although it is not an

83 improvisation, there is an instrumental solo part amid this song. In the last part of this song, a melody 2nd Moon created is played alongside sorikkun’s singing.

Figure 15. A combination of Chunhyang-ga melody (upper) and 2nd Moon’s melody (bottom) in

the last part of “Sarang-ga” (transcription by the author).

When it comes to this part, 2nd Moon members say that many audiences sing along with this melody. Park states, “That’s the performance we had all dreamed of since we released the song.

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We wanted to release some songs that the public can easily sing along to like any K-pop song”

(Arirang TV, 2016). This song, on the one hand, proves that traditional Korean music can be amalgamated into a Western popular music form. On the other hand, it proves that popular music in Korea can appropriate traditional Korean content well.

Another example of this possibility is the thirteenth track of Pansori: Chunghyang-ga,

“Eosa Chooldoo” (“Here Comes the Royal Inspector”). This song is the apex of the story of

Chunhyang-ga regardless of traditional or new version because it depicts the dramatic appearance of the main male character, Mongryong, to save his lover; Chunhyang, who is being tortured by a villain. “Eosa Chooldoo” commences with Irish percussion, bodhràn in 12/8 meter.

Unlike “Sarang-ga,” the lyrics of this song are not perfectly the same as a traditional version; some parts are omitted. This song is expressed by Western musical instruments, for example, bodhràn, guitar, piano, violin, double bass, and drums in conjunction with traditional Korean singing. With the accompaniment of bodhràn and guitar in 12/8 meter, the sorikkun sings in a style of rapping.

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Figure 16. A melody in a verse of “Eosa Chooldoo” (transcription by the author).

I argue that this song is the best example showing 2nd Moon’s purpose of the gugak project because it evidently transmits what traditional Korean musical content says in conjunction with 2nd Moon’s musical features. According to Kim, “pansori is not a genre that can transmit well its contents because of its musical features. We try to complement its disadvantage from a Western musical perspective in order to transmit well its content to the public” (H. Kim, personal email communication, March 1, 2018). In the same vein, Kang (2016) pointed out in her thesis that “In the traditional Pansori setting, the singer usually articulates the themed story with dramatic facial and body expressions, and melodic or rhythmic improvisations aimed to make the performance livelier. A typical Pansori performance often times takes three to eight hours” (p. 3). From my experiences, it was not easy to understand what the sorikkun sings in the traditional version of “Eosa Chooldoo” due to unfixed time signatures and keys as well as pervasive dialectal expressions. On the other hand, the content of “Eosa Chooldoo” is

86 transmitted well to the audience in 2nd Moon’s version in conjunction with fixed time signature and key; 12/8 meter and C major. I am sure that these elements of 2nd Moon’s version help people to understand its content in conjunction with their familiarity of Western style popular music and a famous folk story of Korea. After 2nd Moon performed “Eosa Chooldoo” on an entertainment TV show, I Can See Your Voice, a number of audiences commented on YouTube

(Mnet Official, 2016). For example, “In the beginning i was like ‘oh he is a good pansori singer’ then later I was like ‘ you can be a rapper’ then later iwas ‘ooh magbe a rock singer too’

[sic]” (esi obeng, 2017), “I don't familiar with this genre. But, for so many reason..this is beautiful! I don’t know how to describe it. wow [sic]” (uwii ai, 2017), “my ears fell weird but great [sic]” (Seto Mulyadi, 2017), “Pansori rap is so good” (Convenient Listener, 2017), and

“this is my first time listening to this genre of music, so interesting to me, he must have made a lot of effort to master it” (Jojo Chan, 2017).

Jambinai and 2nd Moon prove that there are diverse music styles in the Korean popular music field embracing aspects of traditional Korean music. Both groups recently had a great chance to expose their music to the world — they performed at the closing ceremony of the

Pyeongchang . Specifically, in response to Jambinai’s performance, global fans commented on their enthusiasm on YouTube (bellaunioninc, 2018)6. For instance,

“So loved this, when I watched it, last night. Need much more of this in my life” (Joe Adams,

6 There are more comments in this YouTube (SBS 뉴스, 2018) clip, even though it is unavailable in the US. According to this clip, for example, people say that “This performance at Olympic …dem, amaizing, +1 fan from Russia .. keep going like this! [sic]” (Argentinaspy, 2018). “I absolutely love this band! Ever since the closing ceremonies, I can’t get this song out of my head. Please tour United States” (Elaine Sippel, 2018), and “Saw them perform this at the Olympics closing ceremonies last night. It blew my socks off. Incredibly powerful! Loved it!” (AirFiero, 2018).

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2018). “Increadible Performance, Jambinai & the other musicians! Undoubtedly, the best part of the closing ceremony!” (Regular Joe, 2018), “I still can’t get over this performance! It’s fucking spectacular!” (m, 2018), and “Fantastic sound. Love the mix of teaditional [sic] music and alternative rock. Very moody” (THXn11, 2018). Because of their distinct musical features embracing traditional Korean music, Jambinai and 2nd Moon are often interpreted as belonging in a different music genre rather than K-pop. However, people have to realize that K-pop today is expanding its musical diversity; both groups contribute to its transition. Jambinai and 2nd Moon can be included as K-pop groups sooner or later with people’s agreement.

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CONCLUSION

In the previous chapters, I have illustrated how K-pop includes diverse races, languages, and musical features. K-pop has been developed as an influential popular music genre around the world. Needless to say, of course, Psy and BTS are well known K-pop artists who had and have huge success in the world and affect(ed) global audiences. Other K-pop groups also appeal to global audiences in many parts of the world. Since typical K-pop songs are a dance-oriented music sung by Korean musicians in the Korean language, people, especially laypeople, might think that dance-oriented music represents the entire genre of K-pop. Furthermore, because of the term “K-pop,” they might think that “Korean” ethnicity and the “Korean language” are significant elements to define K-pop. Such a perspective is likely not only to confine K-pop to a certain category, but also to interrupt its further development. My intention in this study was to emphasize that K-pop is not merely a dance-oriented popular music genre sung by Korean musicians in the Korean language: it is popular music embracing diverse people, languages, and musical genres.

This study began with a wish. When I worked in the K-pop field, I was able to meet a lot of talented musicians in various music genres. Sometimes they were not from Korea, but from other countries. It was fascinating to me that people from other countries came to Korea dreaming to be K-pop stars; some of them actually achieved their dreams. Korean and non-

Korean musicians were singing, dancing, and playing music together under the name of K-pop. I was also fascinated by the fact that many Korean aspirants and trainees were trying to master at least one foreign language before they debuted in order to sing fluently in a non-Korean language. It was not uncommon to see such phenomena when I worked in the K-pop field from the mid-2000s to the mid-2010s. Since coming to the U.S., I am a little frustrated whenever I

89 meet people who think that K-pop is just a dance music genre performed by attractive young

Korean musicians. By wishing this study could contribute to expanding people’s perceptions towards diversity of K-pop, I commenced this study.

In order to bolster my argument, I delved into the developmental history of K-pop from the beginning of the 1990s, analyzed distinct features of K-pop groups having racial, linguistic, and musical diversity, and conducted interviews with audiences as well as musicians. In Chapter

One, I explored K-pop focusing on three crucial aspects; a monumental shift derived from the appearance of Seo Taiji, the distinct features of the K-pop industry, and the governmental support. First of all, the appearance of Seo Taiji provided a general foundation on which Korean popular music can develop by absorbing various cultural elements. It is indisputable that Seo is one of the most influential people in terms of the development of K-pop. Apart from his other achievements, Seo contributed to rap-oriented K-pop music today in that he was the first person who introduced the rap music genre to the K-pop field in 1992. In addition, in the way that youth audiences became main popular music consumers after his appearance, Seo’s appearance is a significant element in terms of the K-pop fan base. From the mid-1990s to the present, the K-pop industry and majority of K-pop idol groups mainly rely on youth audiences.

A distinct feature of K-pop, the trainee system, explains how and why K-pop musicians are manufactured. Apart from its efficiency, this system contributes to the diversity of K-pop in the way that it provides suitable time to non-Korean aspirants to assimilate Korean culture and the Korean language. When it comes to the discourse of K-pop today, it is necessary to look at the involvement of the Korean government. By supporting and intervening in the K-pop industry, the Korean government affects the development of K-pop. For instance, as I discussed, the Korean government furnishes not only governmental subsidies to produce a music album, but

90 also opportunities for musicians to attend global music festivals, such as SXSW, in the US. In the same vein, the government institute, KOCCA, held an annual music convention, called

MU:CON, in order to promote K-pop to the world. In order to prevent unexpected social problems, the government enacted a certain law which caused the phenomenon of 7th year jinx in the K-pop field. Furthermore, by imposing mandatory annual classes on every K-pop agency, the

Korean government intervenes in the K-pop industry. It is important element to look at the

Korean government’s support and intervention because it can explain how nationalism exists in global cultural flows such as K-pop.

In Chapter Two, I specifically focused on non-Korean languages in K-pop songs and non-Korean musicians (non-Asian musicians) in order to argue that K-pop is an example of what

Appadurai pointed out in his five dimensions of scape. In terms of diversity of races and languages, there are two kinds of K-pop groups; one is K-pop groups having Korean musicians singing in non-Korean languages, another is K-pop groups having non-Korean musicians singing in the Korean language. I delved into the reason why many K-pop artists sing in non-Korean languages, focusing on musical industry features of K-pop along with Korean society. Due to limited opportunities, K-pop agencies started to promote their artists to global music market, mainly in China, Japan, and the US. As a promotion scheme, they have released non-Korean versions of songs. Regardless of its success, this tactic is taken for granted and has become a reason K-pop trainees take foreign language classes during the training span. As Fuhr mentioned, non-Korean lyrics exist as a gateway to global audiences.

When it comes to racial diversity, I analyzed the meanings of non-“Asian” musicians in the K-pop field by focusing on three case studies, Reid of RaNia, CoCo Avenue, and EXP

Edition. Through these cases, I described what kind of hardships they faced and how Korean

91 society coped with such an uncommon social issue as racial diversity in Korea. Specifically, this chapter focused on why EXP Edition cannot be considered a K-pop group despite the fact that they have the same aspects of many K-pop groups. One thing they did not have was a Korean member (or Korean ethnicity), which was why K-pop audiences denied EXP Edition was a K- pop group. I considered it as an example of “impediments and inner contradiction,” in the words of Appadurai (2013, p. 65). As a global cultural flow, K-pop also has impediments and inner contradictions as to non-Koreaness.

As much as diversity of race and language in K-pop is important, musical diversity is a significant element to look at in K-pop today. In Chapter Three, I analyzed two non-dance- oriented K-pop bands, Jambinai and 2nd Moon. Before I analyzed them, I clarified why I consider them as K-pop groups focusing on K-pop’s inauthenticity. Also, in conjunction with

Manuel’s definition of popular music, I described several activities that they aimed at popularity in order to make my claim — they are K-pop bands. I not only focused on textual analysis of their music, but also I relied on an ethnographic approach to examine their different features from other normal K-pop groups. Their distinctive musical features, such as utilizing traditional

Korean instruments and playing music in odd time signatures, are crucial elements in terms of the discourse of musical diversity in K-pop. Besides musical features specifically, I emphasized global fans’ assessments of the two bands. To international audiences, Jambinai and 2nd Moon are K-pop bands, regardless of their distinctive sounds. Rather, these distinctive sounds make audiences fans of K-pop. Again, to international audiences, K-pop is not the term referring to a certain music genre, but a cultural phenomenon.

Based on what I examined, I argue that K-pop is not confined to a certain region, ethnicity, or language. In the globalization era, it exists as a global cultural flow amalgamating

92 diverse races, languages, and musical genres. This diversity not only stimulates the globalization of K-pop, but also causes many questions in terms of the identity and definition of K-pop. Even though I conducted interviews in this thesis with non-Koreans by showing K-pop’s diversity to figure out this equivocal issue, I do not think it is enough to conclude the exact meaning of “K” in K-pop. I might need to conduct in-depth interviews with Koreans as well as non-Koreans. I might also need to scrutinize the ideology of Korean nationhood. I hope this thesis contributes to people’s understanding of K-pop today and can be a start for further investigations into the exact meaning of the “K” in K-pop.

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Interviews • Kim Bo-mi, Lee Il-woo, Shim Eun-yong, members of Jambinai, January 25th, 2018.

• Baek Sun-yeol, Choi Jin-Kyung, Jo Yun-jeong, Kim Hyun-bo, Park Jin-woo, Lee Young- hoon, members of 2nd Moon, March 1st, 2018.