Abstract
With spreading of Korean popular music (K-POP) around the whole Asia and in Europe, the idol star management of Korean entertainment agencies has become the center of focus. In fact, it is because the agencies play a major role in developing and spreading of Korean wave.
The most notable characteristic of Korean idol groups is that the ace of a member leads the group. Then, as the aces gain popularity, the rest of the members as well as the groups’ names get recognized.
Regarding fields of area where they can show their talents, they play roles in TV dramas, variety shows, movies and musicals. The diverse activities of idol groups are one of the radical strategies of agencies. Particularly, vigorous training systems and drastic managements that follow after an acceptance from auditions that continue even after their debut have known to be the key strategies of Korean agencies have in making the K-POP stars to be world known stars.
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Notes
- 1.
The Korean Wave, also known as the Hallyu, refers to the spread of South Korean culture around the world. The term was coined in China in mid-1999 by Beijing journalists surprised by the fast growing popularity of Korean entertainment and culture in China. Since the late 1990s, hallyu (Korean Wave) has become one of the most frequently used terms in both the popular culture industry and the related academic fields in Asia. The Korean wave is responsible for achieving over one billion dollars in revenue annually for South Korea through cultural exports (Kim, Sue-young, 2008). For further explanation on hallyu, see Chua Beng Huat and Koichi Iwabuchi, “Introduction: East Asian TV Dramas: Identifications, Sentiments and Effects,” in East Asian Pop Culture: Analyzing the Korean Wave, ed. Chua Beng Huat and Koichi Iwabuchi (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2008), 1–12.
- 2.
Guinness World Records, known until 2000 as The Guinness Book of Records (and in previous U.S. editions as The Guinness Book of World Records), is a reference book published annually, containing a collection of world records, both human achievements and the extremes of the natural world. The book itself holds a world record, as the best-selling copyrighted book series of all time. It is also one of the most frequently stolen books from public libraries in the United States (Wikipedia).
- 3.
KOSDAQ is an electronic stock market, just like NASDAQ.
- 4.
1USD = 1,200 Wons
- 5.
The Korea Composite Stock Price Index or KOSPI is the index of all common stocks traded on the Stock Market Division—previously, Korea Stock Exchange—of the Korea Exchange. It’s the representative stock market index of South Korea, like the Dow Jones Industrial Average or S&P 500 in the U.S.
KOSPI was introduced in 1983 with the base value of 100 as of January 4, 1980. It’s calculated based on market capitalization. As of 2007, KOSPI’s daily volume is hundreds of millions of shares or (trillions of won) (Wikipedia).
- 6.
In many interviews of research done by Jung (2011), most K-pop artists who have been attempting to enter the global (mainly the English-speaking US) market have confessed that the language barrier is the most difficult part of crossing cultural borders. It appears that the language barrier is an unavoidable obstacle for these marginalized pop products to enter the mainstream. In today’s global market many different languages are spoken, and some find intercultural communication and exchange to present severe difficulties. Breaking the language barrier does not necessarily mean mastering other people’s languages and/or speaking them fluently. From her perspective, breaking the language barrier means accepting BoA’s accented English and engaging a range of different subtitled interpretations of Boys over Flowers. It is obvious that advanced digital media technology accelerates the minimization (if not the outright breaking) of such barriers, which enhances the transcultural flows of the once marginalized pop cultural form, K-pop.
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Lee, M. (2013). Star Management of Talent Agencies and Social Media in Korea. In: Friedrichsen, M., Mühl-Benninghaus, W. (eds) Handbook of Social Media Management. Media Business and Innovation. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-28897-5_32
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