How did K-Pop conquer the world?
The Inquiry
BBC
4.6 • 1.7K Ratings
🗓️ 16 May 2019
⏱️ 25 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It's a multi-billion dollar industry, with bands selling out stadiums across the world. K-Pop, or Korean Pop has created some of the biggest global music stars. How did bands, singing in Korean come to such prominence? The Korean government has capitalised on the soft power that its music industry has offered. But with the latest scandals involving the rape and abuse of women is there a darker side to it all? And could it tarnish brand Korea?
Photo: BTS performs 'DNA' onstage Credit: Getty Images/Michael Tran/FilmMagic
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Kevin Fong, Doctor, Space Geek and Podcast Presenter, and in my new BBC World Service |
| 0:06.6 | podcast, 13 minutes to the moon, I get to meet a whole bunch of people who put humans on the |
| 0:12.1 | moon for the very first time. |
| 0:14.0 | With music by Hans Zimmer, the first episodes available now. |
| 0:18.0 | And you can hear more about it at the end of this podcast. |
| 0:22.0 | This is the inquiry on the Be of this podcast. |
| 0:23.0 | This is the inquiry on the BBC World Service with me, Kavita Puri. |
| 0:28.0 | Each week, one question, four expert witnesses and an answer. |
| 0:34.0 | It's 1992 and three young men in a boy band |
| 0:38.0 | are performing in a live television talent contests. |
| 0:47.0 | The sound is new. |
| 0:48.8 | Korean lyrics, Europop, African American hip hop and rap. |
| 0:53.3 | They dance in sync. |
| 0:58.6 | The studio audience go wild. The judges in their prim suits are less impressed. |
| 1:07.0 | They reveal their scorecards. |
| 1:14.0 | The band gets the lowest mark of the night and has voted off the show, |
| 1:18.0 | but they couldn't have got it more wrong. In the next few days the song I know climbs to the top of the |
| 1:29.2 | charts and stays there for a record-smashing 17 weeks. |
| 1:34.8 | That night, the group, Sotigian Boys, |
| 1:37.8 | ignite a revolution. |
| 1:40.2 | Korean pop or K-pop was born. |
| 1:43.0 | It's now a multi-billion dollar industry. |
... |
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