I recently wrote about Fujii Kaze's concert at the Gochuck.
However, I became aware of other Japanese acts advancing into Korea.
Yoasobi's visit to Korea is well documented so I won't repeat it.
King Gnu
Official Hige Dandism will also perform in Korea in December at Ilsan Kintex, where some Kpop award events were held before.
Aimyon is well protected against by the former owner of Edam Entertainment, but male rock bands are hard to protect against since Koreans don't have any equivalent against it.
The Koreans are not concert going but the fans of such acts are willing to pay money to see the concerts of these people.
It seems as BTS and BlackPink exit from the stage, and NewJeans now seriously shaken, the Japanese music, long banned in Korea (although frequently plagiarized), and countered by the meteoric rise of KPop, is finally having its last laugh.
The death of Johnny Kitagawa and the weakening of Johnny's stranglehold on Japan's music scene seems to be the decisive turning point.
The people running Johnny's tried to outdo the Kpop acts making inroads across the world, but given that the entire battle plan of Johnny's was based in Japan and its strong internal market, there was a limit to it since KPop acts could care a lot less on the domestic market and had to concentrate outside of there to go anywhere.
However, the ethos of post-Johnny's Japanese music scene was to promote band style music popular in youtube, and also various new type of promotion.
Korea always had a subculture of people following Japanese subculture, and the songs popular in the subculture spread into Korea, who now had a lot of people jaded from Kpop and wanted something new.
I think after the final surge of BTS in 2026, JPop will dominate Korean Pop at least in Korea.
Already, in 2019, Anne Marie's 2002 became the Melon #1 song. However the Covid lockdowns gave Kpop a big reprieve.
However it was wasted by Bang, who put immediate profits and approval from Korea first, a foolish business strategy as he has become a big laughing stock there.
Meanwhile JPop has made quite a big inroad into Korea, and JPop like songs like gIdle's fate and QWER's T.B.H. are doing better in the charts.
The Senior Singer is getting older and she has no successors. Something is sick when the Senior Singer scores #1 among boys 13-18 and around #2 or #3 among girls 13-18. All these new acts did not make a great impression on that age group. Only IVE is recruiting younger girls in its fanbase so at least there will be a lot of Wonyoung fans as the latter gets older.
The Japanese pop industry will aim for a complete takeover on 2027.
