K-pop, the sound of subaltern cosmopolitanism?about 70 percent of SM’s total revenue comes from foreign royalties and business transactions,
neither of which depend on domestic consumers. Thus, the Korean music industry has become
an industry type highly sensitive to both the international and domestic business cycles.
Digital music distribution by nature involves little or no reproduction costs on the part of
the entertainment companies. A much more serious issue regarding the cost is the potential
conflict in the trainee system. Long-term investments in trainees require high upfront costs that
should be recuperated during the idols’ shelf life and contract period. The idol system’s viability
depends on the virtuous circle in which the profits from the current idols shall be reinvested in
future idols. If the circle is broken, then the idol system is hard to maintain. The average contract
period for idols at SM Entertainment is known to be longer than ten years. “Slave contract” may
be too harsh a term to describe an idol contract, but the serious dispute between SM and the
three original members of Dongbangsingi (now JYJ) attests to the ample potential for conflict
between idols and their companies. Under the current system, it is difficult to imagine fair cont-
racts and reasonable remuneration for idol performers.
Conclusion
Readers may wonder why there is no mention of the new media, especially social media
( YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, etc.), which are important platforms for K-pop fan communities
all over the world. Indeed, K-pop entertainment companies have been actively using social
media as promotion tools (Jung 2016), and K-pop fans are active cultural intermediaries. I will
leave the subject to the expertise of media studies researchers and instead make some gene ral
comments on the academic discourse surrounding K-pop by way of a conclusion.
In the introduction to an edited volume on the reception of K-pop, Choi and Maliangkay
(2014, 7) said that the primary concern for international fans is “their own locality and its
cultural milieu” and the fans are the active agents of “post-textual production.” However, it not
enough to just say that K-pop, as with every other type of pop music, produces different mean-
ings in different places around the globe. Is there any cultural inclination and aesthetic disposi-
tion shared by K-pop fans in different parts of the world? The authors cautiously noted that the
international rise of the Korean music industry gives “a glimmer of hope to those with similar
historical experiences of having been cultural subalterns” in “a new ecology in global popular
cultures” (Choi and Maliangkay 2014, 12). In their words, K-pop provides a “clean” alternative”
(2014, 11) to fans in Muslim Middle East, Catholic Latin America, as well as Confucian East Asia.
Lie (2012, 361–362) by contrast argued that K-pop is “merely a brand, part of Brand Korea
that has been the export-oriented South Korean government.” This echoes the Le Monde
(Mesmer 2011) review of SM Town Live World Tour, which reads, “it seems the boys and girls
trained according to the plans of production companies that have made music into an export
product [and] have reached us thanks to massive support from the Korean government, which
is attempting to market a positive, dynamic national image.” It is undeniable that there is a sort
of collective ethos in K-pop. One of its famous examples is expressed in the very beginning of
I.AM, the documentary film of the SM tour, where Lee Sooman prays, “today we have come
together in one place and would like to perform this mission representing ROK and its people.”
Are we still trapped between an over-political explanation of transnational consumption and
an over-bureaucratic explanation of national production? K-pop is still subaltern and minor-
itized in the global popular culture, although its ecology is gradually shifting. K-pop is wildly
globalized and cosmopolitan in the regional popular culture, even as it is still tied to the national
politics, economy, and culture. Can we call it an example of subaltern cosmopolitanism, an
example of disjuncture in the global cultural economy? If yes, then the abbreviation mentioned