Success of K-pop in Europe

 

RESOURCE YONHAP NEWS AGENCY

Members of the 5 K-pop Bands (picture from yonhap news)

The international impact of Korean popular culture is getting unable to obviate. Last weekend Paris, the capital of France, was full of thousand of fans waiting to taste “kimchi flavour”. The Parisian city held last Friday, 10^th of June, the biggest korean pop concert celebrated in Europe, (I guess the first one). It was a huge success for the 5 top Korean bands (TVXQ, Girls’ Generation, Super Junior, SHINee and f(x)) in their European debut.

Thus was the impact of the performance that it was held another one on Saturday, selling all the tickets. Over 7,000 fans from all over Europe could enjoy 44 songs of these Korean groups in Le Zenith de Paris concert hall. Two percent of the audience was Koreans.

The Saturday, 11^th of June, Lee Soo-man, founder and chairman of SM Entertainment, one of the most important agencies in Korea, gave a conference with around 70 composers and producers in which he talked about the success of K-pop culture.

As Lee Soo-man explained the “Korean wave or Hallyu” is spreading beyond Korean borders in 3 stages: exporting hallyu products, collaborating with foreign firms and passing down Korean CT to local people to create a localized hallyu.

In general, nowadays the spreading of Korean pop culture outside of Korea is moving forward really fast, in a way we cannot even notice. Teddy Ridley, American record producer that worked with Michael Jackson, described K-pop as a type of “movement”. It is becoming a cultural movement implicating the whole world and It cannot be obviated the importance that it has over the international relations of the country.