Is Kpop indirectly replacing chinese idols with vietnamese?

Quote from Uni909

Besides japanese and thai idols that are established in the kpop scene and more are debuting, I can't remember the last time a chinese debuted. NingNing perhaps?

Maybe they are taking in vietnamese instead which we see are more than a handful in Kpop at the moment and Vietnam culture is kind of similar to China? Here are the ones active in Kpop:

--Beauty Box Anh(NUGU)

--Tempest Hanbin. Underrated and Hanbin is a popular former ex-Iland, so it helps the group awareness.

--Newjeans Hanni. A juggernaut group of Kpop enough said.

--tripleS Hsu Nien Tzu. Half taiwanese and half vietnamese, and former GP999. Yeah technically she is chinese, but Taiwan don't see themselves as China.
--Dong Ngoc Hai and Cong on BP999. The first guy is under Fantagio and I think regardless of his status in BP, he's likely will debut in Fantagio new BG.

--One of the trainees for SMNGG is vietnamese.

So you can see, despite being a market that is not profitable and not getting any visits by Kpop groups on tour, they are actually coming to Korea instead.

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Is is not Dong Ngoc Hai but Đặng Hồng Hải who is a trainee of the the South Korean K-pop company Fantagio and who is currently a contestant on the South Korean K-pop survival show Boys Planet.

There are two rumored Vietnamese trainees working for SM Entertainment which are Nguyễn Lan Hương also known as Lan and Lý An also known as Lee Yan or Yi An or Ian.

The traditional Vietnamese culture, the traditional Chinese culture, the traditional Korean culture, the traditional Japanese culture and the traditional Ruuchuu culture are part of the Chinese cultural sphere which is also called the Sinosphere. Those ethnicities have been heavely influenced by the traditional Chinese culture. Most of the foreign influence that those ethnicities received are from the traditional Chinese culture. The Vietnamese ethnicity is the only ethnicity of Southeast Asia which is part of the Sinosphere while the other ethnicities of Southeast Asia are part of the Indosphere.

In terms of numbers of K-pop Idols in the history of K-pop Idols, the Vietnamese ethnicity comes at number 4 after number 1 or number 2 : the Chinese K-pop Idols or the Japanese K-pop Idols (numbers are pretty close between the number of Chinese K-pop Idols and the Japanese K-pop Idols) and number 3 : the Thai K-pop Idols. But the reason that K-pop companies have chosen more people who have Vietnamese ethnicity is not because the Vietnamese ethnicity has a traditional culture that is closer to the traditional culture of the Chinese, the Koreans, the Japanese and the Ruuchuu as the Korean K-pop companies have chosen more Thai K-pop Idols while the Thai ethnicity is not part of the Sinosphere but part of the extended greater culture Indian sphere which is also called the extended Indosphere.

My hypothesis is that K-pop companies would rather chose people not in terms of culture but rather in terms of looks as they would prefer to choose people who look physically closer to the Koreans which is the reason why they would prefer to chose Asian people (like East Asian and Southeast Asian) that look close to Koreans as the looks of the different members of a group looks more harmonious rather than Europeans, Africans, Arabs and Indians that dont look close to Koreans. There have been people that are K-pop Idols and don't have ethnic origins from East Asia or Southeast Asia but there are only very few. The Vietnamese ethnicity looks closer in terms of looks in general to the Chinese, Koreans and Japanese compared to the other ethnicities of Southeast Asia.

There need to be enough people in the foreign country of the origins of the K-pop Idol who has foreign ancestry who have enough purchasing power and also enough people living there. A lot of Mongols have looks that can be harmonious inside the K-pop industry but there are only about 10 or 11 million Mongols. A similar problem in terms of numbers of people occurs also with the Lao ethnicity which has only about 22 million Lao people with only about 3 million Lao people living in Laos and most of them, 17 million Lao Isan people living in Northeast Thailand. Lao language and Thai language is similar at about 80% (and they can understand each other when interacting) so K-pop companies would rather choose Thailand. The Khmer ethnictiy wich has only about 18 or 19 million Khmer people with 17 million Khmer people living in Cambodia. The Kinh ethnicity has 89 million people with 82 million people living in Vietnam. The Filipinos have 100 million people.

The Malay ethnicity has 27 million people with most of them living in Malaysia which is why it is very unlikely that you would see a K-pop company choosing people from Brunei as Brunei only has about half a million people. The Indonesians has 275 million people. Malay language and Indonesian is similar at about 80% (and they can understand each other when interacting) so there is a higher probability that you would see K-pop Idols who are from Indonesia which has 275 million people rather than Malaysia which has 32 million people even if Malaysia has now recently entered the list of States that a have a very high human development index (very high human development index = 0.8 to 1.0 and Malaysia is 8.03) and has a higher purchasing power while Indonesia has a human development index of 0.705 which is part of the high developement human index (0.7 to 0.799) but not very high human developement index.

There are 57 million people in Myanmar. There is a civil war in Myanmar wich might be another reason to why one part of the K-pop companies are more afraid that doing an audition in Myanmar might be dangerous and make them lose more money.

Also besides the purchasing power, the people of a foreign country needs to be interested enough into K-pop.

No, it's not only Vietnamese but SEA in general because it is happen to Thai idols too. These days, ngl but having c-idols are a risk. They don't really have good records on being loyal to their company so obviously a lot of companies kinda afraid of this situation. But actually, good for those idols tho because they know their rights and very brave to fight for it. Not to mention about the their people are very sensitive to everything. I'm not racist but they are quite hard to handle and love to cancel anyone who didn't do what they want. Remember what happen to poor girl, Tzuyu just because of a flag?

And with all the CCP issues going on, more companies will trying to avoid taking c-idols for now, I guess.