Academic conferences are part and parcel of campus life at Yale, but it’s not every day that one opens with a greeting from a global popstar.
Such was the case when a recent conference on the social and cultural significance of Korean pop music, or K-pop, kicked off with a recorded video message from one of the genre’s biggest stars, Kim Jae-joong, a singer and songwriter who achieved worldwide fame as an original member of the popular boy band TVXQ!.
“Congratulations on the international K-pop conference at Yale,” Jae-joong said, speaking in Korean with English subtitles. “I cheer for a successful conference, and I hope everyone is having a great time.”
Gasps and giggles greeted the popstar’s surprise appearance on a screen in Sterling Memorial Library’s lecture hall. Subsequent welcome messages from Yonghoon, lead vocalist for the K-pop band ONEWE, and K-pop girl groups Say My Name, Purple Kiss, and Young Posse were met with similar enthusiasm.
The videos set a joyful mood for the two-day conference, the first at Yale to examine the Korean musical subculture that has attracted a massive global fandom through its catchy hooks, polished visuals, grandiose live performances, and uniquely accessible stars, commonly known as “idols.”
Hosted by Yale sociologist Grace Kao, the IBM Professor of Sociology and professor of ethnicity, race, and migration in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and Wonseok Lee, a postdoctoral associate at the Council on East Asian Studies (CEAS) at Yale’s Macmillan Center for International and Area Studies, the gathering featured scholars studying K-pop’s production, sound, and fans as well as established figures from within the K-pop industry, who offered insights into how the music is made and how the idols are trained.
Hwansoo Kim, Blenda Im, and Kyunghee Eo, Korean Studies faculty with CEAS, were the sponsoring faculty while CEAS staff helped Kao organize the conference.
Attendees didn’t just discuss K-pop music: they enjoyed it. Kao created a playlist of more than 100 songs for the conference and K-pop videos played on the lecture hall’s screen between discussion panels.
Sounds and styles
Kao, a quantitative sociologist, has spent the bulk of her career studying race, ethnicity, and immigration as they collectively relate to education and relationships among young people. She became interested in K-pop a few years ago after watching the popular boy band BTS perform on Saturday Night Live. She began studying the subgenres of K-pop and its cultural, sociological, and political effects.
“People think I’m a long-term K-pop fan, and it’s actually only been four years,” she said, acknowledging that several colleagues have guided her journey into K-pop music and culture. “Having said that, I’ve been very focused on it.”
During a session on the sounds of K-pop, Kao and Wonseok Lee, a musicologist, postdoctoral fellow with Yale’s Council of East Asian Studies (CEAS), and one of Kao’s K-pop tutors, presented a paper they have coauthored exploring links between the British new wave of the 1980s and contemporary K-pop.
At the start of her presentation, Kao stressed that K-pop is a vast and diverse sonic landscape that produces dozens of new acts each year — and that artists are expected to release at least three EPs (“extended-play” releases that include a handful of songs) annually.
“There are many, many influences and we’re not saying it’s all ’80s or all synth pop, we’re just pointing to another little corner of the [K-Pop] universe,” said Kao, whose undergraduate seminar, “Race and Place in British New Wave, K-Pop, and Beyond,” draws on similar themes as those explored in the paper.
During a panel on the production of K-pop, Hyung Kyu Kim, an executive director and producer at RBW Entertainment, second from the left, offered insights in the intensive training that aspiring K-pop idols must complete.
Drawing on a playlist of 60 songs, Kao discussed the various musical and visual influences K-pop artists, managers, and producers have drawn from new wave. Industry leaders, she noted, admit to being fans of new wave bands. For example, South Korean music executive Bang Si-hyuk, a towering figure in the K-pop industry, has often called the hugely popular new wave group Duran Duran his favorite band.
Kao played a clip from the video for “Butter” by BTS, the band that piqued her interest in K-pop. She compared the group’s clothes — jackets with prominent shoulder pads and pastel colors — to the visual style of new wave band Spandau Ballet in its music video for “True,” which reached No. 2 on the Billboard chart in 1983.
“They had the very classic suit look and the pastel and grayish colors,” she said.
Over the two days, more than a dozen scholars presented work that analyzes K-pop from a diverse range of angles. Mathieu Berbiguier, a visiting assistant professor in Korean Studies at Carnegie Mellon University, discussed rivalries between Korean and international K-pop fans.
Stephanie Choi, a postdoctoral researcher at SUNY Buffalo, shared her work investigating the deeply emotional and, at times, fraught relationships between K-pop fans and the genre’s idols, including the lengths that Korean music companies go to establish social media ties between performers and supporters.
So Yoon Lee, a doctoral candidate in sociology at the University of Chicago, described her research into labor-related aspects of the K-pop industry, including the vocational training South Korean men and women undertake while attempting to launch careers in K-pop.
‘Giving back the love’
The practitioners who spoke included journalist Jay Kim, who covers K-pop for The Korean Herald; Su-bin Kim, a producer and top-line songwriter who has released more than 300 songs since 2008 and was the lead vocalist for the K-pop boy band Say Yes; and Dahae Choi, creative director at Hitfire Production, a Stockholm-based production company influential in the Asian music industry, who discussed the international collaborations that drive the songwriting process in K-pop.
A session on music production featured a presentation by Hyung Kyu Kim, an executive director and producer at RBW Entertainment, a leading South Korean entertainment company, and CEO of ModernK Academy, which trains potential K-pop idols. Kim offered insights into K-pop’s trainee system, in which aspiring performers undergo intensive training to develop the performance and social skills needed to achieve stardom.
Speaking through Lee, who served as interpreter, Kim described four virtues that he seeks to cultivate in his trainees: grit, creativity, sociability, and character.
He defined “grit” as possessing the “passion and patience” required to become a global popstar. “It is a marathon, not a short sprint,” said Kim, who arranged the video messages from idols played at the conference.
The demonstration of creativity helps counteract a common criticism that K-pop is too standardized and manufactured, he said. In terms of sociability, he said, trainees must develop deft communication skills to interact with their fans. “In the K-pop industry, it has become more important for groups to communicate with friends, sharing aspects of their daily lives with them,” he said.
Character, the fourth virtue, helps prevent the kinds of scandal that could ruin a K-pop idol’s career and allow them to remain humble in the spotlight, Kim added. He described projects designed to show K-pop idols giving back to the community and supporting the less fortunate.
“I believe that K-pop’s ultimate goal should be to give back the love we receive from fans,” he said.
The Institution for Social and Policy Studies; The Edward J. and Dorothy Clarke Kempf Memorial Fund; and the Yale Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration were also sponsors of the conference.
