N. America out of reach for hallyu

Lady Gaga at the “K-Pop Night Out” on March 11 held on the sidelines of the South by SouthWest (SXSW) festival in Austin, Texas. A total of 15 Korean acts took part in the SXSW this year in a bid to promote not only K-pop but Korean rock bands in one of the largest U.S. music festivals. / Courtesy of Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism

By Kim Ji-soo

• Published Mar 12, 2014 4:46 PM KST
• Updated Mar 12, 2014 4:46 PM KST

Culture gap,

strong pop

industry base

stand in way

By Kim Ji-soo

Much of Asia is in love with the Korean television drama “My Love from the Star,” so much so that the love has reached the shores of North America.

But it traveled via a Beijing-Washington course.

The Washington Post in its March 7 edition dealt with the popularity of the drama in China, but it was a writer from Beijing. After the story appeared, the Korean press duly reported on it.

The popularity of hallyu is strong in Asia, but is slow to pick up in the United States or the larger North American market.

In the 2000s, producer Park Jin-young of JYP Entertainment took his hottest stars, the Wonder Girls, to break into the U.S. market but with limited success. Other K-pop singers such as BoA also knocked on the American market with similar results. Only Psy broke through; but then again, he broke through worldwide.

The entertainment conglomerate CJ E&M held a massive Korean popular culture convention in Los Angeles last August. Ostensibly, the convention was a huge success but insiders noted that the seeming success was bigger than the actual effect.

Leading entertainment agencies in Korea such as SM Entertainment, JYP Entertainment and Core Contents Media are mindful of the North American markets but they are not necessarily the primary ones for the agencies. YG Entertainment recently announced that it will build a music complex in North America to help its artists record, practice and perform in the tentatively dubbed “YGLand” inCalifornia.

Nevertheless, for the agencies, China with its population of 1.3 billion and the fervor for Korean pop content is the first and foremost destination at the moment.

“Although we are seeing a growing interest in hallyu in North America, it is nevertheless a slow process for two reasons,” said Emanuel Yi Pastreich, a professor at the College of International Studies at Kyung Hee University in Seoul.

“First, Europe and America represent a slow transition to modernity over more than a century. The culture is profoundly different and thus the images and values portrayed in hallyu are harder to appreciate,” he said.

But for Asian nations like China or Indonesia that have also struggled with a similar rapid cultural transition, they tend to absorb Korean tropes and aesthetics more easily.

“Most people in the United States know something of Japanese and Chinese history from high school. In the case of Korea, the culture is a blank. For that reason, it is harder for Americans to place the Korean modern culture,” Pastreich observed.

The ignorance of Korea’s past makes it harder, he said for Americans to relate to what they see in modern culture to a greater tradition. Traditional Korean culture such as King Sejong or Chung Yak-yong need to be introduced, he added.

The value of Korean popular content exports in 2012 — mainly games, music, films and animation — totaled around $4.5 billion of which the North American market accounted for 11 percent. Exports to Japan were the largest at 30.2 percent, followed by China (27.6 percent) and Southeast Asia (19.3 percent), according to statistics tallied by the Korea Creative Content Agency.

“I guess in North America, pop music is something for kids, and maybe you’d grow out of it in your early 20s,” said Matt Flemming, a Seoul-based editor.

“I’d also say that in North America, we’re used to consuming media that’s in English. There is little appetite for foreign-language content,” said the native Canadian.

He added that: “The foreign-language content in the mainstream is a niche at best.”

In Berkeley,California, March 8-9, a two-day KPOPCON was held.

Karen Yu, 22, co-founder and director of partner relations at KPOPCON, said that one of the reasons she and other K-pop fans organized KPOPCON in 2010 was that they needed space.

“We needed space where K-pop fans can be forward and say ‘I’m a K-pop fan’ and talk about why,” she said.

The Chinese-American said her interest in K-pop is tied to her background and that she has been following K-pop since elementary school. But she added that not many in the United States may be aware of what K-pop is, so KPOPCON allows people who enjoy it to have an educational discussion about it.

So during the two-day event, the graduate of UC at Berkeley and some 500 attendees discussed K-pop dance and held other workshops. With the goal of providing a safe, critical-thinking space for exchanging knowledge, these discussion workshops included topics on cultural appropriation, gender and sexuality representation in K-pop, forming K-pop interest organizations, and more,Yu said.

The interest in hallyu is expanding, Yu said.

“We even saw a six-year-old attendee dancing to EXO’s ‘Growl’ with her mom and those in their 40s as well,” she said.

The ultimate goal for KPOPCON, Yu said, “is to reach say a fan in North Carolina, and provide a venue where we can talk about K-pop and what we want to achieve with this fandom.”

Meanwhile, Korean rock bands are ambitiously knocking on the door of the English music market. At the South by SouthWest festival underway in Austin, Texas, a total of 15 Korean acts including YB Band, Hollow Jan, No Brain, Glen Check and Rock ’N’ Roll will be performing.

In particular, the YB Band on Feb. 18 released the digital single “Cigarette Girl” in a taste of how its first full-length English album will sound when it’s released in June.