Fundamental question - does KPop need Korea anymore?

It won’t be long until Korea is just a breeding ground for idols. Idols will be an export just like any other commodity. While the K-pop market in the U.S. has experienced growth I think it may be exaggerated. Asia, Europe, and South America continue to be booming markets for K-pop and it’s not slowing down.

The extremely low birth rate in Korea is a concern though long term. I prefer my idols Korean (not that I don’t like foreigners).

International musical acts don’t come to Korea because they don’t need to. Taylor Swift is performing in Tokyo FOUR straight nights. And she will perform in SEA and Singapore alone SIX times. Seriously. Korea and IU won’t even enter her mind.

Quote from Polarize

It won’t be long until Korea is just a breeding ground for idols. Idols will be an export just like any other commodity. While the K-pop market in the U.S. has experienced growth I think it may be exaggerated. Asia, Europe, and South America continue to be booming markets for K-pop and it’s not slowing down.

You can't compare the US to entire continents. It's big, but it's not China. While it would still be considered niche in all of these places, I would wager Kpop has a significantly larger niche in the US than in any individual European or South American country.

I think certain groups are proving you can be more successful overseas than in Korea and still be an overall success, but the proposition of focusing entirely on overseas markets still sounds dicey to me, unless you're a group that was purposely designed to do so, which Fifty Fifty was not. They still have huge one hit wonder potential.

when kpop groups started english songs, it's become clear that they don't. If they release korean songs, then they need korean to give them a high status as idols because how else can we differentiate what's the good korean groups and who's better than koreans to tell us that when they sing in korean?

You forget that like 95% of groups don’t have a huge international fandom and even those that do probably don’t make too much money from their tours and shit to sustain them. Yes of course this question is dumb

They need Korea to produce the workforce, as being Korean is the main selling point of kpop

Do they need Korean customers? Looking at how dreadful is BG charting in 4th gen and how the only group to sold out Gocheok sky dome came from a reality show the answer is a clear No, kpop don't need Korea

Quote from Icaro_Ribeiro

They need Korea to produce the workforce

this. It’s about infrastructure that suits the industry and Korea has that

No.

Fifty Fifty is the best example. Others are Stray Kids, Twice and BP.

Jisoo's Korean promotions was just going on Inkigayo 2 times. Twice promoted for only 1 week in Korea. This shows how irrelevant and important Korea is.

Let put example from recent brand deals trend for KPop artist. The most latest brand deals signed with KPop idols are An Yu Jin with Hana Group which is the biggest Korea financial conglomerates, or Luxury brands for Newjeans that intended to promoting on specifically Korea market, or Domino's Pizza Korea for IU. Man, KPop has really scores big already but most of the big bucks comes because they're undisputable huge on their home soil. So yes, majority of their money still comes from Korea.

And for Fifi, yes they do need to conquer Melon and Circle, For K-poppers that's the true lifeline of their stan and not Billboard.

Quote from hendriesantio

Let put example from recent brand deals trend for KPop artist. The most latest brand deals signed with KPop idols are An Yu Jin with Hana Group which is the biggest Korea financial conglomerates, or Luxury brands for Newjeans that intended to promoting on specifically Korea market, or Domino's Pizza Korea for IU. Man, KPop has really scores big already but most of the big bucks comes because they're undisputable huge on their home soil. So yes, majority of their money still comes from Korea.

And for Fifi, yes they do need to conquer Melon and Circle, For K-poppers that's the true lifeline of their stan and not Billboard.

"In just 40 out of 60 shows, the group has already gathered a revenue of $163,832,685. The group's sold-out world tour started in October 2022 and will continue to Q3 2023, with a total of 60 shows." This is just for tickets. Merchandise sold is about the same as ticket sales.

So Korean CFs are great if the group is limited in expanding globally, but it is not even close to ticket sales for the top acts.

not as much as before tbh

Yes and No.

Quote from WhyKnock

But then 95% of the groups are not that popular, and groups which are well known all have sizable foreign fandom. The Korean fandom is almost like second thought as seen by their smaller concert size.

Bigger companies are sustained by foreign investments, while there are much less smaller companies after all these acquisitions since they can't really survive.

For most groups even today their Korean fans are still more important that foreign fans. Those groups would no survive without Korean fan base even if it is small. What you say is probably true for the top groups but for Kpop as a whole Korea is still important. This question is dumb because it can basically apply to most international stars of any country. Once you get big internationally you don’t need to rely much on the domestic fans. Taylor swift could probably survive without all of her domestic fan base.

Quote from WhyKnock

Not really. IU is basically the last remaining Korean lyricist; even the lyrics are now written by foreigners, with some company hacks calibrating them a bit for Korean use. There might be some staff needed, but they will work for non-Koreans.

Korean customers are no longer relevant.

You forgot the most important workforce: Idols

Granted, you can have foreign, tons of them. But at least half of your group need to be Korean otherwise western fetish in Koreans will vanish

International kpop Fans nowadays Need the Korean market to tell them who is the best group nowadays or which song is performing well. They take cues from the domestic market to extend their support to certain groups or songs.

How many songs have intl kpop Fans dismissed only to gloat about them afterwards bcos it topped the k charts. This doesn’t apply to groups like 50-50 where their virality and success is what attracted the fans to them.

korean pop at least it need korean idols, korean 'idol' culture it doesn't need korea to get bigger but it needs korea to start imo

Big international groups, no, but everyone else does. I thought that was obvious.

i like it how they know what is really an "artist" or an "idol"🙂 but the sad part is that the idols also have stigmas to overcome... i just wish that people know what is the difference between the two but at the same time, they still respect them...😕

To be legit? Yes.

Just to “flip some dimes”? No.

Groups from big companies: No

Groups from small/mid-tier companies: Yes

International K-pop fans only care about groups from small/mid-tier companies when they are already too big in Korea to ignore.

IU will continue to be popular till the day KPOP lost all its importance/popularity. It's basically Taylor Swift Korea version so you better start liking her cause that girl is not losing popularity no matter how many smear campaign that nugus are trying to attempt on her.

Quote from WhyKnock

Gidle already has a majority of non Koreans. All 3 foreign members are Chinese in some way, so it can be called a Chinese group.

Sure, but you need at least half of them to be korean and be based on Korea, otherwise interest will vanish

Quote from Minazuki

Groups from big companies: No

Groups from small/mid-tier companies: Yes

International K-pop fans only care about groups from small/mid-tier companies when they are already too big in Korea to ignore.

Based on these articles:

[단독]음반수출 4달만에 1000억…작년 대비 70%↑

K팝이 역대 최고 수출 기록 행진을 벌이고 있다. 한국 음반 수출액이 4달 만에 1000억원을 돌파했다. 역대 가장 빠른 페이스로 세계에 팔려나가고 있다. 관세청 수출입 무역통계 자료를 보면 1월부터 지난달까지 음반

n.news.naver.com

Seems like the shift to the international market is getting bigger every year, even for groups from smaller companies.

These days too are "easier" for non-big 4 groups to make money without having a number-one hit in Korea as long as they have a good international following. Which was unthinkable to happen a few years ago.

Good examples of that would be Dreamcatcher and Ateez.

Quote from Icaro_Ribeiro

You forgot the most important workforce: Idols

Granted, you can have foreign, tons of them. But at least half of your group need to be Korean otherwise western fetish in Koreans will vanish

To be certain of that, we have to wait until the localized groups from the big 4 debut.

Ofc being big in Korea usually lead to being big in all of Asia till 2021 when SEA kinda pivoted hard lol

Korea is still very important as we can see how NJ Korean dominance has given them an extra edge globally

The question is do you do what Twice did and "own" Korean for 3 years, then concept change and target the global market? The concept change is effectively debuting your group, because the concept they have now, Korea does not like, as their last song peaked at #98 on Melon. This is the slower and risker way, as they have only really been successful globally in the last two years, in their 6th to 7th years. So you may as well target the global market on debut.

Similarly with Stray Kids. Korea dislikes them, yet they sold over 5 million albums in their latest release. Seventeen also got massive in Japan before they started to get more attention in Korea. They had very good songs initially but Korea just wasn't that interested in them.

So far, yes, they do need Korea. You use fifty fifty as an example, but that's based on your assumption that they're gonna leave Korea and have a massively successful career abroad. That's a huge assumption. I think it's more likely that they're a one hit wonder that we'll never hear from again. I love Cupid, but they didn't write that song, there's nothing special about them as a group without that producer.

Right now kpop fans are watching Korean music shows and visiting websites like this one to learn about new groups. Girl groups in other countries that don't have this platform, like the very talented "Boys World" here in the US, aren't gaining any traction at all, despite having better songs than some kpop groups that are doing well. Another example is XG. They're an all Japanese group from a Japanese company that only sings in English, clearly targeting the western market. So why are they promoting on Korean music shows and claiming to be a kpop group? Because that's ironically the easiest way for them to gain western fans. If they were just making tiktoks and trying to get on American radio shows they'd be total nobodies.

In conclusion, kpop groups can make most of their money abroad now, but they still need Korea to be able to access that foreign market.

Quote from Person01

Based on these articles:

https://n.news.naver.com/article/277/0005255497?sid=105

https://circlechart.kr/page_ar…?sgenre=opinion&idx=22177

Seems like the shift to the international market is getting bigger every year, even for groups from smaller companies.

These days too are "easier" for non-big 4 groups to make money without having a number-one hit in Korea as long as they have a good international following. Which was unthinkable to happen a few years ago.

Good examples of that would be Dreamcatcher and Ateez.

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I think we just have different standards for what It means "not needing" Korea.

When you open Circle 2022 Year-End Album Chart, at least 80% are albums from Big Companies. Almost the whole 20% are acts selling well because they are popular in Korea (Kang Daniel, LWY, The Boyz etc) or selling well because they got too popular in Korea and international community couldn't ignore (IVE, (G)I-DLE). There are some other cute appeareances that most likely aren't making a good amount of profits from album sales and aren't touring in more than theaters ww to the point It could make it up being a popular act in Korea.

And there's ATEEZ and Monsta X that are more exceptions than rules.

The thing is, when I think of "not needing Korea", I think of earning significantly well to the point their career can give them a similar/more comfortable life than If they were popular in Korea, getting good CFs, domestic brand deals or good acting and variety roles.

I'm sure a lot of groups from small/mid-tier companies can sustain a career with international support, but I still think that, for most of them, It isn't enough yet to say Korea isn't important.