MUSIC INTERVIEWS
The History of K-Pop Has A Lot To Do With Politics
July 10, 20217:22 AM ET
Heard on NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday
3-Minute Listen
Cartoonist Sam Nakahira details the history of how K-pop became a global
phenomenon.
You can hear audio of the three minute via URL below
https://www.npr.org/2021/07/10/1014914854/the-history-of-k-pop-has-a-lot-to-do-with-politics
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The History of K-Pop Has A Lot To Do With Politics
July 10, 2021 7:22 AM ET Heard on NPR Weekend Edition
Saturday
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
This April, BTS, the biggest group
in K-pop, became the most streamed group of all time on Spotify. But the
origins of the group, and really K-pop, have an interesting political history.
Japanese American cartoonist and
illustrator Sam Nakahira recently drew a comic for Vox about those origins and
tells us now how K-pop came to be a global force.
SAM NAKAHIRA: After Japan's
occupation and colonization of Korea ended, U.S. military kind of came and
occupied Korea again. Because of the military presence, a lot of the military
men kind of wanted to listen to American and Western songs. So a lot of Korean
music artists and bands would perform at military bases. And they would often
perform, like, Western kind of pop-influenced songs. So there was kind of like
westernization coming in through the music industry.
SIMON: For the next few decades, the
Korean government focused on industrialization. And with censorship under a
military dictatorship, there wasn't always a lot of space for the arts. Then in
1997, the Asian financial crisis hit. It meant economic hardship, but also
opened some creative opportunities.
NAKAHIRA: And so after that crisis,
I think the South Korean government were trying to figure out a different way
that they could rebuild their economy.
SIMON: And they found the answer in
a new kind of export, not manufacturing products but culture.
NAKAHIRA: And there was, like, a
culture report in the early '90s that kind of compared the revenue from
"Jurassic Park" to revenue from selling, like, a million
Korean-manufactured cars. And they found that the revenue was kind of the same.
SIMON: Restrictions on speech
started to loosen. And along with support from large corporations, the music
scene began to not just flourish but take off around the world. Today groups
like BTS and Blackpink have broken global streaming records. In 2019, Blackpink
became the first all-female K-pop group to perform at Coachella.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HOW YOU
LIKE THAT")
BLACKPINK: (Singing) How you like
that? You gon' like that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that. How
you like that?
SIMON: And these artists have also
created an army of fans.
NAKAHIRA: I think that kind of the
community of K-pop fans, how they're so connected online, it really helps them
in terms of, like, organizing for other things, like activism and political
organizing.
SIMON: K-pop fans trolled former
President Donald Trump's campaign last year. They booked registrations for a
rally and then didn't show up. That kept on the crowd. And during the Black
Lives Matter protests last summer, K-pop tried to interrupt the plans of the
Dallas Police Department, which had asked for photos and videos to help them
identify protesters.
NAKAHIRA: A lot of K-pop fans kind
of swarmed those police sites that were asking for these videos. And they
uploaded a bunch of fancams of their favorite artists.
SIMON: K-pop has controversies too,
of course. There are ongoing accusations about racism and anti-Blackness within
the genre and about the way the industry forces its artists into exploitative
contracts.
NAKAHIRA: The power is held in
monopolies, where there's just, like, a few large corporations that have a lot
of power over their artists and also over the medium in general.
SIMON: But even so, K-pop's global
power keeps expanding.
NAKAHIRA: I hope that K-pop fans
also are, like, kind of inspired by their interest in K-pop to explore other
parts of Korea's, like, entertainment and art and culture and also their
history.
SIMON: Cartoonist Sam Nakahira of
Vermont.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SAVE
ME")
BTS: (Singing in Korean).
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