How Social Media Helped K-Pop Become a Global Phenomenon

South Korean pop culture has prominently grown to become a global phenomenon in the 21st century, seen in everything from Korean makeup dominating the cosmetics industry, to delicious Korean fried chicken, and to various Korean dramas on Netflix. In short, South Korean pop culture has become the international face of South Korea, effectively spreading the country’s culture to the world. Most importantly, K-pop music is undoubtedly at the heart of the ever-expanding Korean pop culture. 

The success of K-pop is definitely not a coincidence. But how has K-pop become such a flourishing industry? In this article, I will explore how one of the most important factors - social media - leads to this success. With the 2008 emergence of smartphones and social media platforms (Goodwin, 2021), K-pop has dramatically changed and exploited the media landscapes. Technology has helped advance K-pop’s reach around the globe, with Instagram and YouTube buzzing with the latest content from K-pop artists. Moreover, social media has connected fans worldwide and enhanced the interactions between fans and artists. For instance, South Korean boy band BTS has built an enormous fan base by constantly posting content on social media platforms. Even before they released their first music album, BTS frequently published videos of their song covers and dance choreographies (Suñga, 2021). Thanks to efficient social media, BTS has advanced their presence and maintained this high visibility online by regularly uploading content that is engaging to the audiences, specifically the fans. Therefore, it is reasonable to argue that K-pop has become a thriving global and cultural phenomenon because the industry invests in social media to enable communication between content creators and fans. In essence, this investment in social media helps with K-pop’s worldwide reach to greater audiences. 

The producers and entertainment companies utilize social media as means to disseminate the latest content. For instance, many agencies will create social media accounts like Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Weibo for their artists. Through social media, artists can post pictures of their daily lives and interact with their fans. Managers of the agencies can also post music videos and accumulate views from several different platforms. Moreover, with functions such as reposts or retweets, videos and pictures of artists can reach a more diverse audience. Oftentimes, different social media platforms present the same content but in different methods. As a result, this helps create a multi-dimensional representation of K-pop artists. At its roots, social media can spread information to a wide range of audiences in an effective way, both in terms of speed and cost. Today, Korean entertainment agencies can initiate an Instagram account and reach a huge number of followers in a short period of time. For example, in 2015, South Korean Entertainment Corporation JYP’s new girl group TWICE opened their official Instagram account and amassed approximately 14K followers in only 2 hours (Kim, 2015). Since their first post, TWICE’s follower count has continued to grow rapidly. Today, TWICE currently has 21.7M followers on Instagram. This is truly a milestone and just shows how social media can be a powerful tool for K-pop groups to “step” out of South Korea and expand their influence globally. It is also important to point out that K-pop artists can post photos on Instagram and within seconds reach millions of likes. Some posts on Instagram can also be sponsored. In other words, if one wants the posts to get more visibility and reach larger and new audiences, one can promote or boost the posts. Hence, social media makes content creating and sharing fairly easy and manageable. It has indeed brought K-pop artists and their projects to global attention.

As social media continues to develop, K-pop culture will also keep evolving and exploring new boundaries. Although it is difficult to predict how the K-pop industry will grow or transform in the next few years, it is very likely that the influence of K-pop will remain prominent in the world.