Music of South Korea | 한국의 음악

South Korean music is known as kpop by the international community. In South Korea’s music industry, there  is something that does not happen is other countries around the Globe, here there are different Music Entertainment companies that create different bands by picking up local talent and then training them for years. These music groups are known as “Idols” by the general public. The big three of these companies are JYP Entertainment, YG Entertainment and SM Entertainment. South Korea does have Solo artists like other countries but mainly the music industry and the charts are pretty much dominated by these music groups.

Now if we look at the actual music of South Korea, it has gone through a lot of changes in the last decade. In the 1990’s there were idol groups like Shinhwa, Turbo, NRG, Drunken Tiger, Sechs kiss,  Seo taiji and boys and many more. These groups mainly produced pop music with very little rap but as we move down the timeline, rap slowly started being incorporated into these idol groups more and more. In 2000’s, the most dominant idols groups were Super Junior, Big Bang, Girls Generations, Wonder girls, Brown eyed girls and most of these group had special designated rap members who were there to rap in the songs. In 2000’s, Big Bang, Wonder Girls, Super Junior and Girls Generations were the groups that made a breakthrough into the international audience. These group were one of the first to react the listeners outside South Korea. In 2012, PSY ‘s “ Gangnam style” made a huge breakthrough by achieving 3.5 billion views and becoming the most watched video on Youtube in the year. Gangnam style brought a lot of attention from the international to South Korea’s music. 

In 2010’s South Korea’s changed a little more and moved towards hip hop trap direction. In these years, kpop really started getting popular around the World. Idol groups like EXO, BTS, Big Bang, Blackpink, twice  really started dominating the international charts. To give an example,Blackpink’s “ddu du ddu du” got 1.1 billion views, BTS’s “DNA” got 947 million views, EXO’s “Monster” got 349 million views. All these songs have dominated charts around the Globe.

South Korea also has a lot of its own music awards namely Seoul Music awards, Gayo Music awards, Golden disc Awards, Melon music awards. Another thing that differentiates South Korea music from the rest if the world is that they have dance performance incorporated into their music even in the 1990’s they had dance performances in their music videos and it has stayed constant uptill now. Their drama osts also tend to bring a lot of listeners and they do tend to soar on the music charts in Korea.