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You know these iconic moments in music.
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The Beatles landing in the USA,
setting off the British Invasion.
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Jimi Hendrix playing
"The Star Spangled Banner."
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Madonna at the first VMAs.
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Here's one you might not know.
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Seo Taiji & Boys performing
on a musical contest show in South Korea.
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But you definitely know
what this moment created.
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The worldwide industry we call...
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-K-pop.
-K-pop.
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K-pop.
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Korean pop culture that's
sweeping Asia is now taking hold here.
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The explosion of the five billion dollar
global Korean music industry.
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It's like when they got
to LAX, it was like The Beatles were here.
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So here's a question.
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How did South Korea create such
a globally successful music industry?
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To begin to answer that question,
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we need to rewind right back
to that iconic moment.
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You can tell from Seo Taiji's face
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they're not getting the best response
from the judges.
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Then again, I don't really think
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there's enough of a melody.
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Everyone who saw the show
was shocked
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about their performance on the stage.
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To understand why
this performance was so shocking,
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just listen to one of the biggest hits
the decade before.
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It was a patriotic anthem
wrapped in an '80s pop song.
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It was called...
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It's old Korea.
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I'd hear the song
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continuously from TV and from radio.
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The reason he heard this song all the time
was because it was a "healthy song,"
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a patriotic tune commissioned and promoted
by the government.
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This control of pop culture was imposed
by South Korean dictator Park Chung Hee
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and continued after his assassination
in 1979.
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During this era the government controlled
the broadcast systems,
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which televised
wildly popular musical variety shows.
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In order to be broadcast,
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pop music either had to be patriotic,
like "Ah, Korea"...
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...or safe,
like "You're Too Far To Get Close To,"
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a G-rated love ballad.
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Back then, we only had
three broadcast agencies,
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so it was hard to find new culture.
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Seo Taiji & Boys' television debut
in the spring of 1992
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was the defining moment that showed
cultural progress in South Korea
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was possible.
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Seo Taiji & Boys
might be the cultural symbol
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that showed all the changes,
not only in the culture industry,
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but also in the whole environment
in Korea.
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Seo Taiji & Boys rapped,
they wore baggy pants,
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and they danced like B-boys...
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something Korean audiences
had rarely heard a Korean group do.
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When I was young,
people had a negative view of dancing.
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The adults did not look at it
in a positive light.
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In fact,
newspapers started describing them
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as the Korean
New Kids On The Block.
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If they wore something,
it became the trend.
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I think they introduced
American hip-hop fashion to Korea.
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Thanks to them, what we consider normal
within popular culture in Korea expanded.
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Take their 1995 classic "Come Back Home"
about teenage runaways.
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This song skirted past censorship,
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but "Regret Of the Times,"
another track off the same album,
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was banned, because its lyrics
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directly disrespected
the older generation.
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That didn't stop Seo Taiji & Boys
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from becoming one of the most popular acts
in South Korea.
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They wanted to go out on top,
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and so at the height of their fame,
they announced their retirement...
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and understanding the power of an image,
released a music video saying goodbye.
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We are so sad because they left us.
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Nearly 40 years before that,
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South Korea was
an incredibly poor country,
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but it had developed its economy
strategically from the ground up
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and by 1996,
when Seo Taiji & Boys retired,
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it was the 11th richest country
in the world.
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Enter Lee Soo Man,
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a former Korean entertainer
turned businessman, who saw music
as the next big export.
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"Made in Korea" should be stressed,
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Lee Soo Man's first hit product was H.O.T.
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Oh, "Candy."
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I performed this in school.
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The gloves
were the most important part.
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Yes, the ski gloves were a thing.
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If you look at Seo Taiji & Boys
and H.O.T. side-by-side,
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you'll see some remarkable similarities.
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They blended hip hop
with dance music,
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and they wore clothes
meant for the slopes.
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You have to understand,
we love H.O.T.,
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but their music videos
confused us as well.
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People were wearing those gloves
on the streets.
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It was shocking to me as a child.
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They wore ski apparel once,
and the next thing you know,
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everyone was wearing
the same clothes at the slopes.
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And then there was
the choreographed dance.
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And there was this dance, the...
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Yeah, the... This thing.
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It was called the man chi chun,
which is like a hammer dance.
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If you're a kid, and you don't like
awesome choreography,
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then you're not really a kid.
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This song was huge,
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and there were about, like, 200 songs
that tried to do what this did.
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Lee Soo Man
had clearly tapped into something,
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and a year later,
when a catastrophic financial crisis
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pummeled Asia,
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the South Korean government
had the same idea as Lee Soo Man.
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Culture could be
the county's next big export industry.
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They even passed a law devoted
to bolstering the arts,
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and vowed to dedicate at least 1%
of the entire state budget to culture.
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There were three main companies
ready to take advantage:
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Lee Soo Man's SM Entertainment,
and two other new music agencies,
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JYP and YG.
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YG's founder was none other than
Yang Hyun Suk,
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a member of Seo Taiji & Boys.
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These three companies
established the formula for making K-pop
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that still exists today.
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First things first, the "K" in "K-pop"
stands for Korean, so it's...
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Korean pop.
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I would describe K-pop
to someone who's never heard it as...
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Pop on crack.
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I don't want to call it manufactured,
'cause that feels rude,
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but there's this whole presentation
to the groups.
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It's absolutely not cynical music at all.
It is just pure optimism.
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Even in the Korean market,
We often talk about what K-pop is.
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Does it refer to a band made in Korea
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Across the world,
we're used to the term K-pop,
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but in Korea they're called "idol groups"
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because they were made
through a very specific process.
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The entertainment company
auditions or scouts the idols,
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trains them to sing, dance and act,
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and carefully assembles them
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into incredibly polished
and well-rounded groups.
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Now, this process
can take years,
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and it's a process
that K-pop didn't invent.
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That same factory system
was used by Motown,
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the label that cultivated hit acts
like The Supremes, The Temptations,
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and The Jackson Five.
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Speaking of The Jackson Five,
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K-pop bands usually have
at least five members,
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often a lot more,
and they all take on specific roles.
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You'll very rarely find a group
where two people are very similar.
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The K-pop groups
will typically have titles to them
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about their positions.
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As for me, I got a role of a leader
and a songwriter and rapper.
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You have the singer,
the rapper, the dancer.
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-J-Hope, him.
-Yes.
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He's the dancer of the group.
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You have the magnae,
the youngest one,
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which is a role unto its own.
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That makes the chemistry of us.
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It's like The Avengers.
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Imagine, like, The Avengers
with nine Tony Starks.
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That doesn't work.
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You gotta have Ant-Man,
you have to have the Hulk,
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you gotta have
very different personalities.
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Now, they may all be different,
but every K-pop idol
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has to be squeaky-clean.
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Idols must be kind and polite,
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and never be involved
with alcohol, drugs, or scandals.
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Love is the biggest topic,
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and it's also the topic that K-pop stars
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are never allowed to really
talk about personally.
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There's this idea
that every single K-pop star
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is meant for the fans.
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And when a K-pop group
looks for an audience,
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they almost always look
beyond Korean borders.
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You'll see clues
of that international strategy
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in the very names of the groups.
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They're almost always acronyms,
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so there's no issue translating them
for a global market.
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It started
when the uniquely Korean Seo Taiji...
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...was followed
by the easily marketable H.O.T.
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If you take a closer look
at the K-pop group EXO,
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you'll see another marketing strategy:
subgroups.
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Two members are there
specifically to sing and rap in Chinese.
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Not only does the group frequently release
two versions of one song,
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they sometimes even shoot
two versions of the same music video.
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People talk about K-pop as a music genre.
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It's not really a music genre,
it's a music idea.
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And it's as much a visual art
as a musical one.
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You can see it in the bold colors
and impeccably timed choreography
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of their music videos.
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Even at this point,
if you're from a small label,
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your production for a music video
is still gonna be
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a thousand times better
than a music video coming out in the U.S.
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A K-pop music video looks like...
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Oh, my God.
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Crazy choreography
with amazing, intricate sets
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and weird costumes.
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I don't think there's a single group
that cannot dance well.
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They'll have a vague story element
that's just complete inscrutable,
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so something like BTS's
"Blood Sweat & Tears."
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Very European art museum.
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But no one's got any idea what's happening
and then they intersperse that
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with beautiful dance moves,
which is fantastic.
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Music videos like "Blood, Sweat & Tears"
have been a driving force
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of K-pop's viral success around the world,
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and while K-pop songs
are largely sung in Korean,
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you'd be hard-pressed to find a K-pop song
that doesn't have some English lyrics.
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Yes, there are occasional English words
here and there,
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but the good thing about the English words
is that it makes it catchy.
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Over the decades, East or West,
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there's been a back and forth
with the influence.
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That's what pop basically is.
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You know, you can't really pinpoint, like,
a location to it.
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In fact, many K-pop songs
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are written by foreign composers
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from Sweden and the U.S.
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K-pop is happy to take good ideas
from anywhere.
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Take "Red Flavor,"
one of the biggest K-pop hits of 2017.
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It was immortalized by Jack Black
in a viral video taken from a Korean show,
Infinite Challenge.
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Infinite Challenge,
it's a very popular show here.
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The song was written by Caesar & Loui,
two Swedish producers.
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00:12:38,675 --> 00:12:40,969
We actually wrote "Red Flavor"
for a Western girl band.
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-It was called "Dance With Nobody."
-It was about a break-up.
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We had... ♪ Dance with nobody,
nobody but me ♪
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SM ultimately changed the lyrics
to be a breezy summer hit,
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but hidden right before the song's chorus
is a little ode to Swedish pop royalty,
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-ABBA.
A little ABBA piece there.
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They always have these parts,
it's like they answer the melodies.
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43 seconds into "Dancing Queen"
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you'll hear exactly
what they're talking about.
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And 43 seconds into "Red Flavor"
you'll hear this.
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Which brings us to the next key part
of the formula:
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how K-pop songs mix and match genres.
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K-pop is all about experimentalism.
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You can go from super bubblegum-y pop
one minute
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to a hardcore breakdown the next second.
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Most K-pop fans won't even blink
at this point.
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Take 2013's "I Got a Boy"
by Girls' Generation.
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There are at least nine moments
where different genres work together...
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like here.
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Skip ahead just 20 seconds
and another unexpected shift happens.
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♪ Stop, let me put it down another way ♪
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I got a look at "I Got a Boy,"
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every popular genre at the time
is something packed into one song.
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It's a K-pop classic,
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and hints of its structure
can be found in a lot of K-pop tracks.
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In terms of how agencies create the music,
K-pop is more product than art.
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But the fans don't consume it
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merely as a product,
like a car or a laptop.
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Rather, they're interpreting
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and finding their own ways
of enjoying it.
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In 2011, the K-pop industry
hit a big milestone.
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The big three entertainment companies
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organized their first tours
outside of Asia
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00:14:52,559 --> 00:14:55,479
and Korean television
broadcast those images back home,
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proof that Korean culture
had finally found its global audience.
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I saw the news, some European fans
made some kind of flash mob
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in front of the Louvre Museum in Paris.
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A year later...
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...there was this.
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00:15:15,540 --> 00:15:18,752
The video took K-pop style
to a ridiculous extreme,
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00:15:18,835 --> 00:15:22,714
and it was the first ever YouTube video
to reach a billion views.
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00:15:22,798 --> 00:15:26,009
When "Gangnam Style" happened,
we were there with Psy
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when it was being created
to, like, when it exploded.
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He was confused the entire time.
Even now he doesn't understand it.
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00:15:33,225 --> 00:15:36,103
He's like, "What's going on?"
I'm like, "How would I know?"
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But it's awesome!
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00:15:38,146 --> 00:15:41,149
K-pop was now a worldwide sensation.
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00:15:41,233 --> 00:15:45,612
In 2005, the whole Korean music market
was ranked 29th in the world.
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00:15:45,696 --> 00:15:48,115
By 2016, it was ranked eighth.
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00:15:48,407 --> 00:15:51,535
That incredible success
also put a worldwide spotlight
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on the long-standing criticisms
of the industry,
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that entertainment companies push
their young recruits into long contracts,
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controlling every aspect of their careers.
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00:16:00,961 --> 00:16:03,505
The industry still has a way to go,
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00:16:03,588 --> 00:16:06,299
but some criticisms have been met
with reform.
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In 2009,
the Korean Fair Trade Commission
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00:16:08,927 --> 00:16:10,929
began regulating agency contracts,
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00:16:11,013 --> 00:16:14,433
removing terms they deemed
excessively long or restrictive.
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00:16:15,308 --> 00:16:18,562
Of course there are still problems
in the relationship between artists
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and agencies,
with how contracts are managed.
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00:16:20,939 --> 00:16:26,903
That might have been true in the past,
but K-pop has changed since then.
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00:16:26,987 --> 00:16:31,992
This image of idols with no freedom
whatsoever is no longer true.
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00:16:32,909 --> 00:16:34,411
That rigid factory structure
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00:16:34,494 --> 00:16:37,539
also gets to something
the headlines often overlook.
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That actually gets to the core of K-pop.
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00:16:41,835 --> 00:16:43,545
It's "so K," so to speak.
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00:16:43,628 --> 00:16:49,092
To be patient and endure
and finally achieve what you want
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is greatly valued and respected in Korea.
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00:16:52,929 --> 00:16:55,682
Even after "Gangnam Style's"
incredible success,
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00:16:55,807 --> 00:16:59,686
the U.S. market was still stubbornly hard
for the K-pop industry to penetrate,
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and for one key reason.
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00:17:02,397 --> 00:17:06,109
The U.S. market has historically been
really averse to non-English music.
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That is, until BTS.
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00:17:08,445 --> 00:17:11,698
Making their U.S. TV debut,
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00:17:11,782 --> 00:17:14,743
make some noise for BTS.
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00:17:14,826 --> 00:17:17,829
It's like when they got to LAX,
it was like The Beatles were here.
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00:17:18,580 --> 00:17:20,499
BTS will always have a special place
in my heart.
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00:17:20,582 --> 00:17:23,085
I love BTS so, so, so, so much.
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00:17:23,168 --> 00:17:27,297
I like a lot of their music,
but their fans are a bit scary.
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00:17:27,756 --> 00:17:31,384
BTS has basically smashed
every U.S. record for a K-pop band.
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00:17:31,843 --> 00:17:35,388
To understand how, you have to look at
Billboard's social media chart.
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BTS has been at the top
for over a year.
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00:17:38,308 --> 00:17:40,560
Billboard eventually cashed in
on that enthusiasm,
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00:17:40,644 --> 00:17:44,106
releasing collector's edition covers
for each band member.
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00:17:44,189 --> 00:17:46,650
The music's great, but the thing about BTS
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00:17:46,733 --> 00:17:47,901
is social presence.
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00:17:47,984 --> 00:17:50,195
That makes them very accessible
to many fans.
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00:17:50,278 --> 00:17:52,614
That's something that is impacting
other K-pop companies.
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00:17:52,697 --> 00:17:55,867
A lot of times,
they just seem like old friends.
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00:17:55,951 --> 00:17:57,702
They also are very genuine,
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00:17:57,786 --> 00:18:00,372
and they have a lot
of chemistry together.
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00:18:00,455 --> 00:18:02,958
They're still individuals,
but the chemistry between them
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00:18:03,041 --> 00:18:06,211
is almost unmatched
in all the K-pop groups.
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00:18:07,754 --> 00:18:09,673
But what really sets BTS apart
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00:18:09,756 --> 00:18:12,217
from most other K-pop acts
is their lyrics. We always talk about
the young people's lives.
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00:18:15,846 --> 00:18:17,806
BTS deals with some subversive themes
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00:18:17,889 --> 00:18:21,852
that speak directly to a generation
that feels enormous pressure.
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00:18:29,484 --> 00:18:31,153
Those messages are very similar
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00:18:31,236 --> 00:18:34,948
to the band that inspired
the K-pop industry in the first place,
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00:18:35,031 --> 00:18:36,533
Seo Taiji & Boys.
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00:18:36,616 --> 00:18:39,911
In 2017, BTS even covered their classic
"Come Back Home."
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00:18:43,081 --> 00:18:44,749
And when Seo Taiji gave a concert
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00:18:44,833 --> 00:18:47,544
to celebrate the 25th anniversary
of their debut,
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00:18:47,627 --> 00:18:49,671
BTS joined him on stage.
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00:18:52,215 --> 00:18:54,885
South Korea became
a pop culture powerhouse
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00:18:54,968 --> 00:18:58,513
by taking Seo Taiji & Boys' style
and turning it into a formula.
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00:18:59,472 --> 00:19:01,224
The formula is so successful
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00:19:01,308 --> 00:19:03,727
that K-pop has now touched
nearly every continent.
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00:19:03,810 --> 00:19:05,312
Hi, I'm Anubhuti from India.
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00:19:05,395 --> 00:19:07,731
-...and I come from Finland.
-...from the Philippines.
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00:19:07,814 --> 00:19:09,566
-Costa Rica.
-I'm from Canada.
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00:19:09,649 --> 00:19:13,361
This is my K-pop tattoo. K-pop is my life.
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00:19:14,321 --> 00:19:17,741
K-pop helped the world understand
and open up to a country
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00:19:17,824 --> 00:19:18,950
it knew little about.
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00:19:19,492 --> 00:19:23,121
If someone sees a video
of a K-pop idol group
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00:19:23,747 --> 00:19:25,248
for the first time,
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00:19:25,332 --> 00:19:27,709
with high probability they're going to be
kind of confused.
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00:19:28,251 --> 00:19:29,586
That's not a bad thing.
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00:19:30,170 --> 00:19:31,963
It's one of the reasons why K-pop
is so great.
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00:19:32,047 --> 00:19:34,257
Fans are able to connect
with the artist,
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00:19:34,341 --> 00:19:36,885
even though there's a difference
in culture sometimes.
333
00:19:37,636 --> 00:19:40,513
As K-pop acts start going outside
of the formula,
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00:19:40,597 --> 00:19:44,100
expressing their own ideas
about their country and culture,
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00:19:44,184 --> 00:19:45,852
there are millions of fans