The Birth of Korean Cool (14 page)

Of course, there are other countries that have motivated, hardworking young people who would do anything to be stars. (India comes to mind.) But those countries, frankly, lack Korea’s
financial resources and organizational skills to turn these stars into world exports. The K-pop model requires music companies to invest a lot of money up front for a very distant return.

“K-pop is a five-to seven-year plan,” comments Lee Moon-won, “and the U.S. can’t do that.” In other countries, it would not be profitable to put up so much money
for training.

Many K-pop music executives may have entered the business thinking they were going to be managers of musicians, but they found out that their role was really that of long-term babysitter. K-pop
is a paternalistic system that disciplines its stars. This isn’t just a matter of whether band members get along; it’s also necessary to steer them away from drunk driving, drugs, or
sex scandals. K-pop star training is an education of the whole person. Which is also why band members are taught etiquette.

I remember when K-pop started to become huge. It seemed very abrupt. Korea had all this substandard sad music, and then in the mid-1990s it seemed to have derivative music that was very slick,
but not that different from the most unimaginative incarnations of American rhythm and blues. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, K-pop had become as cool as it was unique, mesmerizing, exquisite, and
habit-forming.

It seemed like a sudden and abrupt change, as if Korea had suddenly decided to go off the metric system or drive on the other side of the road. MNET, which launched in 1997, was instrumental in
changing the Korean public’s view of the entertainment industry. Just as MTV changed the way Americans thought of music, so MNET transformed the song-based product into a video-based one.

Then in the early 2000s, down came Rain: a chiseled, sensuous R & B singer who broke the mold. Rain’s videos were the first I saw that bore what came to be the K-pop stamp. Highly
artistic direction, stylized sets, as if the video were taking place in the Matrix, and ingeniously choreographed.

Rain was the first K-pop star to break out internationally. In 2006,
Time
magazine named him one of the “100 Most Influential People Who Shape Our World.” In 2007, he made
People
magazine’s “most beautiful people” list.

MNET’s Shin explained the formula for a K-pop hit. “If you look at the videos, there are two immediate attention grabs. The visual and the hook, you get them both at the same
time.” The biggest and most obvious difference, said Shin, is the quality of the dancing. “In the United States, with the popular bands, the choreography is very different.” And
by different he means bad.

“If you look at New Kids on the Block, for example, the members are not really synchronized. And in Justin Timberlake’s [performances], the dancers are a bit off. Dancers in American
bands are freer and go by feeling. The United States doesn’t have singers who dance really well, unless it’s someone like Michael Jackson, and that kind of talent comes around once in a
hundred years. And J-pop bands don’t dance well either; they don’t practice.”

Dancing well isn’t enough. K-pop band members must dance in perfect synch, like clockwork. If you’ve ever seen a K-pop video, you’ll notice that while no one is Baryshnikov,
they do have split-second precision. And in order to achieve that, you have to put the band together while they’re still young and hold off their debut until they’ve learned to act as
one.

Shin added, “The K-pop practice duration is much longer than in the U.S. or with J-pop. The mentality in Korea is different. In Korea, if you’re making a movie, you tell your staff,
we have to sit up all night, and they do it. In Hollywood, however, they’re strict about schedules. Same with music. The popularity of Korean music is tied to the fact that there’s a
strong collaborative mentality. They’ll do it if it kills them.”

The songs and videos focus on the singers and not on the musicians; there are no instrumental solos. As for the look of the K-pop video, it’s worth noting that Psy’s “Gangnam
Style” is very atypical in that it uses real street scenes and real locations, mostly unadorned. The setting of most K-pop videos, by contrast, is sparse, futuristic, and sometimes wintry,
like a space-age version of a Chekhov play. The girls always smile; the boys never do, instead bearing warrior expressions. Everyone is brutally attractive.

K-pop bands tend to have a relatively large number of members; Girls’ Generation, for example, has nine. One doesn’t need that many people to produce the simple K-pop sound, but
South Korean music producers have found that large groups acting in unison are catnip to fans.

To get an idea of how manufactured K-pop is, one Korean television program started four simultaneous and separate K-pop bands with a color theme. Collectively, they are called the Color of
K-pop. Two are girl bands: Dazzling Red and Mystic White. The other two are boy bands: Dramatic Blue and Dynamic Black. Band members wear outfits corresponding to the color in their band name. Each
band has its own character: Mystic White is innocent, Dazzling Red is sassy, etc. Picture the Care Bears.

If this sounds like a marketing plan for mix-and-match shirts and pants of different colors at the Gap, that’s exactly the effect the producers are going for. You don’t need to know
what the individual singers’ back stories might be—which ones grew up in a trailer park or started singing gospel in their church. I mean, how interesting can a twenty-year-old’s
biography be, anyway? K-pop labels love stars, but not superstars: they don’t want to get into a situation in which one band member becomes indispensable.

The bands are prefabricated and treated like a consumer product right from the beginning. Music producers create a product design for the band they want, right down to the precise look, sound,
and marketing campaign, before they even audition members.

K-pop executives always have an eye on foreign markets, and adaptability to different cultures is part of the formula. Many K-pop bands release songs in Chinese or Japanese, like Girls’
Generation’s “Paparazzi” (nothing to do with Lady Gaga), recorded in Japanese. TVXQ!’s entire marketing strategy is based on appealing to Japan. Boy band Super Junior has a
Chinese subunit, called Super Junior M, featuring two Chinese members. Many bands, like the girl group 2NE1, have Korean Americans so that the English sounds authentic. Clearly, the system
works.

I asked Shin what he thought of Psy. He made a thoughtful observation: “The actor Bruce Lee changed westerners’ ideas about Asians. And Psy is doing the same thing for
Koreans.”

He was careful to point out, though, as those in the K-pop industry are wont to do, that Psy is an outlier. It’s not an insult—not anymore, at any rate. It’s just that Korean
music executives want the world to know there is more to Korean pop than Psy. “There are a lot more artists than you think,” he said. “Psy is an example of a funny act; he’s
like Jack Black. But in the future, other people who are new and talented [will be successful globally]. At one time, UK pop culture invaded the world. So there is a lot of possibility for cultural
migration.”

Shin was entirely confident that K-pop could continue to break the language and culture barrier and become a huge global influence. “Music is very direct,” he said. “Even if
you don’t know the lyrics, the sound goes into your inner ear and vibrates. The sound of a bass line moves your body; everyone reacts the same to this. Nationality and language can be
overcome, because it’s so directly felt. You can make instant friends with someone if you like the same music, even if you don’t speak the same language. K-pop is beyond your
imagination.”

After much harassment and string-pulling, I was able to interview a bona fide K-pop idol (albeit via e-mail), Lee Joon, a member of the highly successful boy band MBLAQ. He’s considered
the cute one of the group, kind of like Harry Styles from the UK boy band One Direction. His immense popularity with girls is buoyed by his dance background; he was a dance major at the prestigious
Korean National University of Arts.

Lee is a notable exception to the cookie-cutter K-pop star. In 2010, he publicly admitted that he suffers from bipolar disorder. In a country that is still loath to admit the existence of mental
illness, his confession was groundbreaking. I told him that to many outsiders, all K-pop bands sound the same and asked him why he felt MBLAQ was unique.

“I think that in a way, it’s to be expected that foreigners would think K-pop bands sound the same,” he replied. “As for me, even I wouldn’t claim that I’m
completely dissimilar from other K-pop artists. But Korean artists are not all exactly alike. Each artist has his own distinct color and interests. So the genre really does contain a lot of
variety.”

The big unanswered question in K-pop is whether it can conquer the United States. Pop critic Lee Moon-won thinks so. “Something has changed in the United States. The Reagan era was the
last time that the U.S. was exclusively into themselves. Before that, in the 1960s, foreign art house movies did really well in the United States. After that, in the 1970s and 1980s, at the height
of the cold war, [the self-centeredness] was bad. Especially under Reagan. After Reagan, they became more open to other cultures.”

Other observers don’t see why breaking into the U.S. market is even a goal. Among them are Martina and Simon Stawski, an ebullient young Canadian couple and self-professed K-pop fanatics.
Theirs is probably the best English-language site for comprehensive analyses and reviews of Korean culture.

In an interview in the couple’s kooky bohemian studio in Seoul, Martina said, “Look how well K-pop is doing in Japan. They buy the CDs for $40 a pop.” The albums come with
posters and other goodies. “But K-pop companies don’t care about Asia. They want to break into America. I don’t see why.”

Simon and Martina agree that Korean record labels have to change their game plan if they want to appeal to the United States. Psy, they believe, is popular because he’s funny.

“We think sometimes bands will try to go for humor in their videos, but it’s
ehgyo
[cutesy baby talk] humor.
Ehgyo
humor is not easily understood [outside
Asia].” She’s right. It’s not. It’s sort of a setup in which a girl infantilizes herself as a means of light flirtation, and you can’t tell whether she is talking to
her older brother or her boyfriend. It’s not quite French-style sexy-baby, like France Gall or Brigitte Bardot; it’s more innocent, like a petulant child.

I asked Martina what suggestions she would make to Korean record companies, in order to broaden K-pop bands’ appeal in the United States. She said, “They’d have to not use a
lot of makeup for guys, the clothes can’t be too tight, and then maybe some comedy. For some of the bands there are too many members.” She suggested that having dual releases—one
U.S. version and one local version—might be a solution.

If I had to pick a male band that had a good chance of crossover success, it would be Big Bang, and especially one member, G-Dragon, whose real name is Kwon Ji-young. (Dakota Fanning is
reportedly a big fan.) G-Dragon was signed onto the SM label at age eight; he was a trainee there for five years. He then moved to the YG label, where he trained for an additional six years before
debuting with Big Bang—meaning that he was in training for a total of about eleven years before setting foot on a public stage.

I saw G-Dragon perform live at the same concert where I saw Psy. When I first saw him on stage, I didn’t know who he was or what to make of him. He arrived solo, which for some reason made
me worried for him. He has a slight build with soft features, his eyes rimmed with black eyeliner. Tons of it. More than I used to wear even during the years when I listened to the Smiths and read
Nietz sche.

He bellowed to the audience what the non-Englishspeaking world believes to be a universal rapper cry: “Whassup!” Then he led the audience in a neo-Dadaist chorus.

What made this weird, in addition to already being weird, is that Korea didn’t have crayons when I was growing up. It was a source of some wistfulness in my house, actually. The closest
they had was Cray-pas, which is a more sophisticated pastel cousin of the crayon.

I wasn’t sure I was hearing him correctly until I saw that the giant screen behind him showed images of crayons. And then he launched into one of his biggest hits, called
“Crayon.” Trust me, it’s a good song.

THE GANGNAM CHAINSAW MASSACRE

The adulation of K-pop stars had a bit of a dark side: it inevitably gave rise to legions of fans who were willing to go to extremes to look like their idols.

South Korea is the world’s plastic surgery capital, in terms of procedures per capita, leaving countries like Brazil and the United States in the dust. In 2011, some 1.3 percent of Koreans
had some kind of cosmetic procedure; this is 35 percent higher than the United States and nearly double that of Japan or France.
³
A figure like 1.3 percent
might seem trivial, but not when you’re in Seoul, where the vast majority of procedures are concentrated. Some one-fifth to one-third of women in Korea’s capital (accounts vary) have
undergone some kind of beauty-enhancing procedure. Apgujeong—my old neighborhood, located in the famous Gangnam district—is the absolute center of the plastic surgery hub. Though the
neighborhood is smaller than one square mile in size, it contains some four hundred plastic surgery clinics.
⁴

There is sort of a golden mean for Korean beauty, and it’s wholly different from western standards. In North America and Europe, nose reduction and silicone lips are very popular. In
Brazil, fat injections, including buttock augmentation, constitute 13.7 percent of all plastic surgery procedures.
⁵
In Korea, however, the request for any
of those procedures is basically zero.