K-pop & Bangtan Boys

By Park Moo-jong

The yuletide talk of the town is Bangtan Sonyeondan (BTS), a K-pop boy band, which is translated as "Bulletproof Boy Scouts."

The Korean hip-hop boy band, composed of seven lads aged 20-25, ranked 10th in the Billboard's year-end rankings of the overall top artists of 2017, the first Korean singer or group to join the coveted list.

For reference, Ed Sheeran, the 26-year-old English singer-songwriter, closed out the year as the top artist, followed by Bruno Mars (2nd), Drake (3rd), Justin Bieber (7th), Taylor Swift (25th) and Lady Gaga (26th), among others.

The Billboard's unprecedented ranking for the Korean artists is no wonder. The 40 concerts of their world tour that ended in Seoul over the weekend show why they are qualified to deserve the honor.

In particular, the last three Seoul concerts at Gocheok Skydome appeared to be undisputed evidence of their global popularity as Arabic, Chinese, Japanese and English as well as Korean were all heard in the crowd of 60,000 fans from across the world.

So many fans were seen to be uploading pictures and videos of the boys in real time on social media "for the benefit of those who couldn't make it."

The lads are doing to the joy of ordinary citizens what those "great" people in our society's "high-class," such as the National Assembly, government and judiciary among others, are unable to do as they are so busy seeking their personal and factional interests.

To recall, the first Korean singers who made their career in the United States were the Kim Sisters, a trio consisting of two sisters and their cousin. The girls arrived in Las Vegas in 1959 and performed on the Ed Sullivan Show more than 20 times, proving their success story overseas, with their signature songs such as "Charlie Brown," "Kim-chee" and "Little Darling." (You can enjoy these songs on YouTube).

For more than a half century there were no Korean pop artists like the Kim Sisters until Psy, the then 35-year-old singer-rapper-songwriter, hit the world all of a sudden with his mega hit "Gangnam Style" in June 2012, thus boosting K-pop (Korean popular music) across the planet.

Even then United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon expressed his desire to work with him for his "unlimited global reach" and his music video exceeded one billion views on YouTube, the first footage to do so in the website's history.

I, myself, experienced the unlimited global reach, at Dubai International Airport in December that year. At the Duty Free Zone of the airport, I demonstrated the Gangnam Style dance very poorly, though, and to my joy, many transit passengers, including female flying attendants and even Arabic women wearing hijabs, followed suit very delightfully, turning the vast area into a dancing hall for a moment.

Just five years later, the K-pop group "bulletproof boys" has made history with their U.S. TV debut and scored a spot in the Guinness World Record 2018 for having the most Twitter engagements for a musical group ever.

Frankly speaking, the boys, not the lads, are quite different from members of other boy and girl bands like the Wonder Girls, Girls' Generation, Super Junior and Exo, for example, who are merely singing and dancing puppets; by writing and producing most of the songs themselves.

The so-called K-pop "idols" are generally known for being tightly controlled by their management, including notorious diets, while the Bangtan boys always appear so polished, coming across as "real men" and not manufactured products as their "creator" Bang Si-hyuk says.

Bang, refusing to be called the "Father of BTS," said that he didn't think artists are products of someone else. "Their success is the result of listening carefully and noting the growth, happiness and concerns of each member." It is coincidental that his surname is "Bang" like the Bang of Bangtan.

Especially, the CEO of Big Hit Entertainment managing BTS also suggests the way K-pop artists are supposed to go for international success. In an interview with The Korea Times, Sunday, he said, "I don't think we should teach the singers English and produce English songs for the U.S. market."

The 45-year-old CEO's "independent" philosophy earned him the tremendous success of the Bangtan Boys not only in the U.S. but also in the world as he was quoted as saying in the interview: "A Korean singer who learns English, makes a debut in the U.S. on a contract with a label there and receives love from American fans is not a K-pop singer. He's merely an Asian singer who debuted in the U.S."

Indeed, his strategy and philosophy are a stark departure from those of other leading entertainment firms' leaders producing strictly "Americanized" English songs in rhythm, lyrics and atmosphere, which can climb major U.S. charts in a short period, as The Korea Times has reported.

Other hard-trained K-pop singers or bands need to take a lesson from the BTS success featuring only Korean songs as already proved by Psy whose "Gangnam Style" is totally sung in Korean, except for the word "style."

The Bangtan Boys also appear to be ambitious as they want their name to also stand for "Beyond the Scene" because they are expanding to global markets. It is good for Koreans to have such a band, which is one of the 25 most influential people on the internet as Time Magazine named.

Park Moo-jong is the standing adviser of The Korea Times. He served as the president-publisher of the nation's first English newspaper founded in 1950 from 2004 to 2014 after he worked as a reporter of the daily since 1974. He can be reached at moojong@ktimes.com or emjei29@gmail.com