The K-pop Wave: An Economic Analysis

Patrick A. Messerlin 1
Wonkyu Shin 2
(revised October 6, 2013)

ABSTRACT
This paper first shows the key role of the Korean entertainment firms in
the K-pop wave: they have found the right niche in which to operate—the
‘dance-intensive’ segment—and worked out a very innovative mix of old
and new technologies for developing the Korean comparative advantages
in this segment. Secondly, the paper focuses on the most significant
features of the Korean market which have contributed to the K-pop
success in the world: the relative smallness of this market, its high level
of competition, its lower prices than in any other large developed country,
and its innovative ways to cope with intellectual property rights issues.
Thirdly, the paper discusses the many ways the K-pop wave could ensure
its sustainability, in particular by developing and channeling the huge
pool of skills and resources of the current K-pop stars to new
entertainment and art activities.
Last but not least, the paper addresses the key issue of the ‘Koreanness’
of the K-pop wave: does K-pop send some deep messages from and about
Korea to the world? It argues that it does.

Keywords: Entertainment; Comparative advantages; Services; Trade in

services; Internet; Digital music; Technologies; Intellectual Property
Rights; Culture; Koreanness.

JEL classification: L82, O33, O34, Z1

Acknowledgements: We thank Dukgeun Ahn, Jinwoo Choi, Keun Lee, Walter G. Park and the
participants to the seminars at the Graduate School of International Studies of Seoul National University,
Hanyang University and STEPI (Science and Technology Policy Institute). We are also very grateful
for discussions with Jingi Cheon and Changhyun Oh (National Folk Museum of Korea), Jinwoo Oh
(JW Entertainment) Sunghyun Park (KOFICE: Korea Foundation for International Culture Exchange),
Seongwon Park (KOCCA: Korea Creative Content Agency). Patrick Messerlin is very grateful for the
rich discussions with Bernie Cho (DFSB Kollective), Christine Chung (GSIS-SNU), Jongpil Shin
(Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism) and last but not least, Sunguk Song and the faculty members
of the Hallyu Graduate School of the Catholic University of Korea.

1
Visiting Professor at the Graduate School of International Studies of Seoul National University, Emeritus
Professor of economics at Sciences Po. E-mail: [email protected]
2
Research Associate of International Commerce and Finance Center at Seoul National University and the Science
and Technology Policy Institute (STEPI) Associate Research Fellow. E-mail: [email protected]

1
INTRODUCTION

In 2012, Psy’s ‘Gangnam Style’ has made the entire world aware of “K-pop”—the Korean
wave of popular dance and song. 3 But, K-pop was already flourishing much before ‘Gangnam
Style’, with Korean boys- and girls-bands drawing huge crowds in Japan and South East Asia
since the early 2000s, and starting to make deep inroads in Europe and in the US since the late
2000s. At this time, a few K-pop stars, such as Rain, have already begun to move in other
segments of the entertainment business, performing as stars in Hollywood-made movies. 4
This K-pop wave is not the first emergence of Korea in the world entertainment area. Since
the 1950s, Korean movies have attracted world attention, the latest illustration being the 2012
Golden Lion awarded to ‘Pieta’. In the mid-1990s, a Korean TV drama (‘Winter Sonata’) made
a huge hit in Japan, opening a series of similar successes in East Asia [Russell 2008]. But, all
these successes shared one feature: they remained limited in quantity (movies), in time (big
ups and downs in the movies case) or in geographical scope (TV dramas).
The current K-pop wave is definitively different. It is already roughly 15 years old (longer
than the boom years of the Hong Kong movies and of the ‘Japanese pop’ wave). It involves
more than a dozen of K-pop bands having regular hits in world charts (for instance, ‘Fantastic
Baby’ from the ‘Big Bang’ K-pop band gets 1.5 times more YouTube hits than ‘Marry the
night’ from Lady Gaga). Lastly, the K-pop wave attracts an amazingly diverse audience—not
only teens and twenties but also their parents, not only fans in Asia, but also fans in the Western
world, Middle East, Africa and Latin America. All this triggers a sense of a true ‘cultural’ tidal
wave.
This paper focuses on the main economic reasons explaining the K-pop success. Such a
focus is far to ignore the artistic aspects which indeed surface in many parts of the paper. But,
Korea’s long tradition of remarkable skills in pop music since the 1960s has never enjoyed the
world-wide recognition of the current K-pop wave. 5 Hence, the following question: do
economic factors explain the difference between the K-pop marginality in the past and its
worldwide success of today? The paper argues that indeed they do—in two ways.
First is the decisive role of a few Korean firms operating in the ‘dance and song’
(hereafter DS) segment of the vast entertainment world. Section 1 shows how these firms have

3
Was ‘Gangnam Style’ a Psy’s success or a Youtube success (with Katy Perry’s interaction)? The fate of the
recent Psy’s song ‘Gentleman’ suggests that it was probably both.
4
Rain has been included four times (2006, 2007, 200, 2011) into the TIME list of the 100 most influential people
in the world.
5
Some early K-pop musicians, such as the guitarist Shin Joonghyon, have received prestigious world awards.

2
progressively gathered and mastered all the elements necessary for a world success: first
targeting a neglected but very promising segment of the world entertainment demand which
suited perfectly the artistic skills existing in Korea; then developing these skills and delivering
them to the world by a unique combination of old and new techniques—a technological and
business shift in the entertainment sector as dramatic as the one introduced by the Japanese
carmakers in the car production thirty years ago.
The second economic factor is the set of market- and price-based incentives which have
propelled the K-pop onto the world markets. Section 2 shows that small and very competitive
Korean markets, with some elements of innovation-friendly concentration and a very peculiar
price structure (buying songs on-line in Korea is much cheaper than in the other industrial
countries), have strongly induced Korean DS firms and K-pop stars to go abroad as
energetically as possible. However, it should be stressed that these factors alone could not have
triggered the K-pop wave without the decisive actions of the Korean DS firms.
The K-pop success raises the question of its sustainability which is examined in section
3. Will the current K-pop wave be another short-lived hype, as so often the case in the vast
entertainment world? Or, will it a powerful source of wide ranging diversification, nurturing
Korean waves in other entertainment or art activities? This sustainability issue raises in turn a
question that haunts many Koreans: does the current K-pop wave channel a sense of
‘Koreanness’ to the rest of the world, a question left for the conclusion.

SECTION 1. KOREAN DS FIRMS’ STRATEGIES: BLENDING OLD AND NEW TECHNOLOGIES

Korea was definitively not an obvious candidate to become the epicenter of a tsunami wave
in music entertainment. It faces (still does) the language barrier which matters in pop music if
one sets aside English that half a century of US- and UK-pop dominance has made a kind of
“franca lingua” (common language) for popular songs. Although based on an alphabet, the
Korean language is difficult to learn. It is spoken by roughly 80 millions of people in the world
(making it close to the German language) but this figure includes the 25 million secluded North
Koreans and the 10 million members of the Korean diaspora disseminated in Central Asia.
Until the mid-1990s, Korean officials were routinely stressing that Korea was a developing
country. This was not a mark of Confucian humility, but reflected the vivid memory that in the
early 1970s, Korea’s GDP per capita was still close to the GDP per capita of a Sub-Saharan
African country. In the late 1990s, the nascent confidence of the Koreans in their economic

3
“miracle” was crushed by the Asian financial crisis which was more severe in Korea than the
one currently ongoing in Europe and in the US.
In short, in the late 1990s, Korea was facing huge entry costs in a world entertainment
market largely dominated by US and other English-speaking performers. As a result, the very
few Korean DS firms had to answer three strategic questions:
• on the demand side, did it exist segments of the DS sector which could offer good
prospects to Korean performers?
• on the supply side, which were the segments in which Korean performers could have
right away comparative advantages (skills) giving them a chance to be successful
relatively quickly?
• on the supply side again, which were the technologies allowing Korean firms and
performers, almost unknown outside Korea, to emerge quickly as full players first in
regional markets, then in world markets?
By providing appropriate and innovative answers to these three questions, the Korean DS firms
have generated the current K-pop wave.

1.1. Demand: spotting a niche for K-pop

Figure 1 orders the major segments of the DS sector by their relative intensities of song and
dance. On the one extreme (top left) of the spectrum, European classical music, Korean Court
music and popular Korean Pansori rely almost exclusively on song and music. Singers or
musicians are generally static on the stage which tends to be cluttered with musical instruments,
leaving little room to potential dancers. Today European popular music still follows largely
this pattern, with a strong reliance on the national language.
The key innovation introduced by the US-UK pop music in the 1960s was a shift
towards a higher ‘dance intensity’. This was mostly achieved by a ‘swinging’ music, but with
only limited dancing by some performers. Performances on the stage remained often static,
partly because, until recently, singers have had no incentive to cultivate their potential dancing
skills since the existing supports for music (LPs and CDs) could not convey any visual element.
As a result, dancing was often left to ‘backstage’ dancers. This situation did not change much
with the emergence of music TV-channels (such as MTV) because these TV networks brought
a ‘visuality’ into the pop music (with the video-clips) limited to TV screens. However, there
were a few remarkable exceptions—the most remarkable one being Michael Jackson with his

4
exceptional dancing skills. It is no surprise that Michael Jackson is a key reference to most of
the K-pop stars of the 2000s.

Figure 1. The main segments of the music and dance entertainment

At the other extreme (bottom right) of the spectrum, Figure 1 lists entertainment segments
that are more dance-intensive than song-intensive. In these segments, dancers take over the
stage, music and song become mere supports (instruments are often not visible), and the
performances become much more dynamic and visual.
The current K-pop wave pertains to this last part of the spectrum, with a definitive shift
from song-intensive to dance-intensive performances in the mid-2000s under the influence of
Rain, and his brilliant dancing skills. Interestingly, Figure 1 shows that K-pop has many
‘cousins’, from the European Classical Ballets (see below) to ‘Disco’ to traditional Korean
popular rural dances (‘Namsadang’) to B-boying. Last but not least, the new technologies of
the mid- and late 2000s have made possible the permanent visuality of the K-pop wave via
Internet (YouTube and its competitors) on ubiquitous portable screens (smart phones, tablets,
etc.). 6
As a result, Figure 1 leads to two complementary conclusions. First, if Korean performers
are present in all the DS segments, they do not enjoy an equally easy access to world audiences.
Korean language and the pentatonic scale of Korean music make (much) more problematic the

6
The Korean DS firms have greatly benefited from the very innovative environment generated by the Korean
electronic firms in terms of information technology. But, the K-pop wave has also benefited from the direct role
of some members of the Samsung family [Russell 2008].

5
success of Korean singers than the success of Korean dancers. 7 Second, the dance-intensive
segment was largely neglected by the recent world pop music, with the total disappearance of
the Disco in the mid-1980s and Michael Jackson’s de facto retirement since the mid-1990s. In
sum, a key segment of the DS entertainment was largely untapped in the mid-1990s, and the
language was not a barrier in this segment. 8
This conclusion did no escape long the attention of the main Korean DS firms. In this
respect, it is important to stress that, in contrast with the large US, EU or Japanese DS firms,
the main Korean DS firms of the 2000s (SM, YG and JYP) have been run by former or existing
dancers and/or singers who have a deep insider knowledge of their sector and of the artistic
strengths and weaknesses of their Korean fellows. 9 As a result, their firms were well equipped
to assess if there were in Korea potential performers with the basic skills needed to enter
successfully the dance-intensive segment—in other words, if there were initial ‘comparative
advantages’ in Korea for this specific segment.

1.2. Supply: discovering K-pop initial comparative advantages

Economic analysis shows that a country has always some comparative advantage, that is,
can always produce some goods or services relatively more efficiently than the other countries.
This universal lesson (so counter-intuitive for non-economists) has been amply illustrated since
the Second World War. Korea is a particularly good example, starting with comparative
advantages in relatively unskilled labor-intensive basic goods (textiles) and shifting
progressively to increasingly higher-skilled labor-intensive and higher-tech products (from
cars to electronics).
Indeed, the Korean DS firms have benefited from two vibrant sources of Korean dancers—
one traditional and one modern—which have constituted the initial basis of K-pop comparative
advantages in the dance-intensive segment. 10

7
A pentatonic scale is a musical scale based on five notes per octave, in contrast to the heptatonic (seven notes)
scale generally used in K-pop music.
8
As stressed by the economic analysis of international trade, what counts are the relative skills, not the absolute
ones. Michael Jackson was both an excellent dancer and singer, but it remains above all as the “moon walker”
for most people. In other words, when compared to other performers, his talent as a dancer was even more
remarkable than his singing skills.
9
Lee, Sooman (founder of SM Entertainment) was a singer, Yang, Hyun Suk (founder of YG Entertainment) was
a dancer (in a famous Korean group, Seo Taeji and Boys) choreographer and singer, Park, Jin Young (founder of
JYP Entertainment) was a dancer and singer.
10
In other words, Korean DS firms have first looked at the existing Korea’s endowments (as suggested by the
so-called Heckscher-Ohlin approach in the economic analysis of international trade).

6
 • the tradition of rural dance in Korea is still very lively: ‘Namsadang’ dances are a must
in every Korean street when there is a popular event. 11 Namsadang dances possess the
key features that characterize today K-pop bands: they are danced by bands, with each
dancer taking the lead at one point of time with his specific performance, they are
accompanied by a music with a strong ‘addictive’ tone, and they emit an intense energy.
• the recent but deep attraction of young Koreans for urban B-boying, a dance where
Korea has rapidly emerged as one of the leading countries in the 1990s and the 2000s.
Many K-pop stars have been B-boys. 12

Figure 2. Relative endowments: Korea vs. the West

Figure 2 illustrates these vibrant sources of dancing and the initial comparative advantage
they gave to Korea. The curve KK’ illustrates the Korea’s relatively abundant dancing
possibilities compared to its more limited (if only because of the language) singing capacities.
In contrast, the US or EU curve WW’ exhibits relatively larger singing capacities compared to
dancing capacities. The line WK reproduces the range of DS activities described in Figure 1.
The points K and W illustrate the best baskets of entertainment activities to be produced by the
K-pop and by the US/-EU-pop, respectively.

11
Traditionally, Namsadang were danced by groups of male dancers, going from village to village.
12
For example, Woo-hyuk Jang (H.O.T), Son Dambi, U-Know Yunho (TVXQ) and Jay Park (2PM). The
attraction of Koreans for B-boying is easy to understand when one recognizes a few key similarities between B-
boying and some aspects of Namsadang dances.

7
 Discovering initial Korea’s comparative advantages was not an easy process for the Korean
DS firms. It was a long trial and error process. For instance, BoA’s success in Japan (with her
song ‘Listen to my Heart’ 2002) still relies on a heavy song-intensity carefully delivered in
Japanese—making her a quasi-local performer [Lie 2012]. Rain may have been the first Korean
performer relying systematically on his dancing skills in the mid-2000s (he often sung in
Korean outside Korea). These two examples still rely on individual performers—hence remain
close to the Michael Jackson’s format. But, the transition to boys- and girls-bands was not a
difficult move in a Korean environment so much saturated with the tradition of Namsadang
bands.

1.3. More on supply: developing Korean comparative advantages

Once identified, Korea’s initial key skills had to be developed. This is where the major
Korean DS firms have been particularly innovative. They have dramatically changed the
‘technology’ of producing DS entertainment by combining a very old technique of producing
talents (analyzed in this section) with a very new one for delivering these talents (analyzed in
the next section 1.4). 13
The old technique of producing talents consists in training K-pop bands members in “in-
house academies” run by each Korean DS firm. Each firm recruits promising talents at an early
age (starting from 9~11 years old) and train them intensively in an in-house process lasting
several years—providing them lectures in dancing, singing, foreign languages, hosting them in
dormitories and facilities, etc.
This technique is sometimes criticized as ‘unethical’. However, it should be stressed that
this technique is not new at all: it is the one adopted three centuries ago by the European
Classical Ballets and still enforced today by these Ballets. For instance, the School of Dance
of the Paris Opera Ballet recruits potential talents around the age of 8 years, trains them with
total immersion in the School until they are 13 years old, then continues to train the most
promising talents with again total immersion in the School until 16 years, before finally
incorporating only a (very) few of their trainees as full professional dancers of the Paris Opera
Ballet.

13
In short, section 1.3 focuses on technology differences among countries (as suggested by the so-called
Ricardian approach in the analysis of international trade) and section 1.4 on the role of ‘variety’ (as in the so-
called ‘imperfect competition’ approach).

8
 That Korean DS firms have been using the same training technique than the European
Classical Ballets is not fortuitous. For both institutions, in-house training is the only way:
• to ensure that dancers will meet the incredibly high requirements imposed by dancing;
• to give a specific ‘touch’ to the dancers trained (as it is the case for the French or
Russian Schools of Ballet) which is a critical element of the ‘branding’ of the K-pop
bands (Ballets) among the fans (connoisseurs);
• to specialize the various members of the band according to their skills and to combine
them in the best way possible;
• to increase the variety of performances provided by the band, including by creating sub-
groups within the band;
• to reduce the consequences of situations where a member of the band is sick or hurt
(risk-management).
Combining all these features have led to K-pop bands comprising generally of four to ten
members (up to thirteen in the case of Super Junior).
In-house academies is only one illustration of a key feature of the Korean DS firms: they
are ‘vertically integrated’—a frequent industrial structure in the Korean economy. Some in-
house songwriters and choreographers are also integrated in the firms, with other songwriters
and choreographers working under contracts. This is in sharp contrast with the market-based
approach prevailing in the US and EU. In these countries, performers are trained in schools
unrelated to the DS firms, and then try to find firms eager to promote their titles.

1.4. More on supply: delivering Korean comparative advantages

Very traditional in their way to nurture talents, the Korean DS firms have been very
innovative in delivering their titles. They have been the first ones in the world to “go on-line”
(hereafter OL) massively—that is, to use social media such as Internet providers and YouTube
for releasing the new titles of their bands and for marketing these titles and the associated
concerts. In sharp contrast, US and EU DS firms have shifted reluctantly and slowly to the OL
delivery mode. Several reasons explain this rapid and massive OL strategy of the Korean firms:
• the Asian financial crisis has hit the Korean economy at the same time than the CDs
market faced its first big plunge (late 1990s), making the decline of the CDs market

9
 much more dramatic in Korea than in Japan, the US and the EU, hence requiring much
more rapid and drastic measures from the Korean DS firms. 14
• the Korean DS firms have been much less directly and massively involved in the CDs
production than their competitors, hence have had much less incentives to protect CDs
production, in contrast with the Japanese and European DS firms (Philips, Sony) which
produce both CDs and content.
• CDs have no visual content, hence do not promote well the dancing-intensive niche
targeted by the Korean DS firms.

Going OL: becoming more efficient and more focused on content

The intensive OL strategy has made the Korean DS firms more efficient and focused on
producing the DS content than their competitors.

Table 1. Going on-line: becoming more efficient and focused DS providers

Operators US dollar %
Music companies 11,4 51,8
registration fees 0,7 3,0
operating margin 2,0 8,9
production costs 2,4 10,7
overhead costs 2,9 13,1
advertising costs 3,6 16,1
Retailers 4,9 22,0
Performers 4,2 19,0
Others (songwriters, etc.) 1,6 7,1
Total 22,1 100,0
Services component [a] 8,4 38,1

Note: [a] sum of the advertising and retailing costs.

Source: SVM web site: forum.zebulon.fr/repartition-du-prix-dun-cd-de-16-20-ht-t37097.html,
(January 2004).

Marketing CDs requires a heavy budget in advertising and retailing services. As illustrated
by Table 1, these two activities amounted to almost 40 percent of the total costs of a typical
music company—a huge amount of money diverted from what should be the core objective of
any DS firm: producing content (dances, songs and spectacles). By going OL, the Korean DS

14
CDs sales in Korea fell from index 100 (1997, the peak year) to 85 (1998) 69 (2002) and to only 20 (2006).

10
firms have been able to cut substantially the costs of these two activities and, when possible,
to re-allocate these funds to the core business of producing content—in short to become both
more efficient and more content-focused.

Going OL: enlarging the scope of consumers’ possible choices

Going OL has also strongly induced the Korean DS firms to increase massively the
potential variety of choices available to the consumers first in Korea, and then (indirectly) in
the rest of the world.
Table 2 gives a good sense of the magnitude of this evolution. For the price of one CD,
Korean consumers can buy roughly 250 (iTunes early 2012) to 150 (Amazon early 2013) titles
whereas consumers in other countries can buy only 10 to 15 titles. In other words, Korean
consumers have access to roughly 13-20 times more titles than consumers in other industrial
countries, a massive expansion of the variety of the choices at their disposal—a key feature for
the modern societies which price variety so highly.

Table 2. Going on-line: boosting the variety of the consumers’ choices

iTunes Amazon CD Number of

price price average downloads per CD
per song per song price iTunes Amazon
(US$) (US$) (US$) (nbr) (nbr)
Korea 0.05 0.09 13.5 254 145
Australia 2.32 1.72 21.2 9 12
Japan 2.57 2.52 23.1 9 9
EU-Britain [a] 1.57 1.28 15.7 10 12
EU-Britain [b] - 1.02 15.7 - 15
EU-France 1.60 1.93 19.6 12 10
EU-Germany [a] 1.27 1.28 16.5 13 13
EU-Germany [b] 1.66 -- 16.5 10 -
USA [a] 1.33 1.28 11.2 8 9
USA [b] - 0.89 11.2 - 13
Sources: For iTunes prices: Stop Dumping Music Campaign, June 2012. For details on
Amazon prices, see Annex 2.

This result is largely due to the very low OL prices of songs in Korea compared to those
in the rest of the world (CDs price in Korea are much more similar to those in the rest of the

11
world). It raises a crucial problem: low prices mean low revenues, hence require cuts in costs.
If ‘too’ deep, these cuts could endanger the sustainability of the K-pop wave by forcing Korean
DS firms to produce ‘remakes’, that is, to repeat themselves and to make variety more apparent
than real (a situation faced by TV channels with multiple but rather similar shows).
So far, the Korean DS firms have been able to successfully address this challenge by
profoundly reshaping the traditional model of producing DS titles:
• as said above, going OL allows these firms to re-allocate, when possible, the funds
saved on advertising and retailing expenses to the core activity of content production;
• going OL helps the Korean DS firms to find additional resources within the DS segment
because, by creating a permanent and deep relationship between the K-pop stars and
their fans, Internet has fuelled the need of concerts targeting fans (with the associated
events). As shown in Annex 1, half of the K-pop concerts are fan-oriented. This is a
major overhaul of the pattern generated by LPs and CDs which have rather increased
the distance between performers and their audiences.; 15
• going OL induces Korean DS firms to find additional resources outside the DS segment
For instance, as Internet is heavily used by the advertising industry, the Korean DS
firms have quickly realized that they could earn substantial additional revenues by
allowing their K-pop stars to become models in advertising, particularly in the cosmetic
and fashion sectors;
• going OL also induces Korean DS firms to find less costly techniques for producing
music. For instance, Korean DS songwriters are at the forefront of using software
enabling them to test the music they are composing without the use of expansive
studios; 16
• last but not least, the ‘internationalization’ of the activities of the Korean DS firms helps
them to mobilize not only new funds, but also new skills. Members of the bands and/or
upstream contributors (songwriters, choreographers, designers) coming from outside
Korea bring with them almost inevitably more variety.
SECTION 2. MARKETS AND PRICES: THE IRRESISTIBLE PUSH FOR K-POP EXPORTS

15
For its April 2012 concert at the Zenith in Paris, Super Junior was able to fill up 6300 seats with minimal
advertising launched only a month before. The average official price was a very hefty 100 euros a seat (prices on
the spot were much higher) but the fans got a concert lasting 3:30 hours . Fans came from all over Europe.
16
These efforts echoe the long history of techniques lowering costs for creating and memorizing music—the
most famous one being the ‘musical hand’ attributed to Guido d’Arezzo (around 1000 BC).

12
 With their strategy, the Korean DS firms have been able to grab the opportunities
offered by the DS markets and prices, a success best illustrated by the huge boom of K-pop
exports documented in section 2.1. This remarkable success has been driven by three main
forces: the ‘smallness’ of the Korean DS market (section 2.2), the intensity of competition in
these markets (section 2.3) and the differences between the DS prices prevailing in Korea
compared to those prevailing in other industrial countries (section 2.4). Finally, section 2.5
examines how the Korean DS firms have been able to find innovative ways to handle the
intellectual property rights (IPR) issues in the 2000s.

2.1. The boom in K-pop exports

Within the last few years, the Korean ‘all music’ (K-pop plus other Korean music)
market has witnessed an unprecedented growth. Table 3 shows that the value added of the
whole Korean music sector has increased at an annual average rate of 23 percent over the period
2005-2011, roughly six times the annual average growth of the Korean GDP (whereas the
world music markets have plunged by 23 percent between 2005 and 2008 (last available year)
according to IFPI). The growth rate of the export of Korean music is even more remarkable:
on average 36.4 percent per year for the period 2005-2011, with skyrocketing figures for the
most recent years (more than 100 percent for the years 2008-2011).
These exports consist almost entirely of K-pop CDs, and they do not include the
massive OL sales in foreign countries nor the revenues from concerts outside Korea. As a result,
the ratio of exports to value added indicated by Table 3 (12.3 percent in 2011) is a systematic
underestimate of the relative boom of K-pop exports since the numerator reflects only exports
of K-pop CDs while the denominator covers all Korean-made music. There is no precise
measure of the share of K-pop in the Korean all music market, but this share is estimated by
some observers to roughly 80 percent in the early 2010s (KOCCA 2011). As a result, a more
accurate estimate of the ratio of K-pop CDs exports to K-pop domestic market would be 15 to
20 percent in the early 2010s.
This estimate covers only ‘direct’ music exports. It does not take into account the K-
pop music incorporated in other segments of the entertainment industry. For instance, many
Korean-made games use K-pop titles in their musical background (K-pop dance festival wii,
Tap sonic, etc.). Table 3 presents the basic data for the Korean electronic games sector. The
fact that the Korean games sector is so large compared to the music sector suggests that the
‘indirect’ exports of K-pop music embedded in Korean electronic games can easily reach a
13
level comparable to the USD 200 millions of the ‘direct’ K-pop exports in 2011—doubling the
K-pop exports ratio. 17

Table 3. The recent boom in K-pop exports (million US dollars)

2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011
Music
Sales 631 1211 2522 2345 2131 2535 3420

Value added (VA) 559 801 848 859 801 988 1442

Exports 22 17 15 15 24 72 177

Imports 8 9 11 10 9 9 11

exports/VA (%) 3.9 2.2 1.8 1.7 3.1 7.3 12.3

imports/VA (%) 1.5 1.1 1.2 1.2 1.2 0.9 0.8

Games
Sales 8474 7796 5536 5083 5156 6427 7946

Value added (VA) 4278 3825 2677 2547 2624 3259 3777

Exports 551 486 421 641 712 1179 1961

Imports 227 217 419 351 260 210 185

Exports/VA (%) 12.9 12.7 15.7 25.2 27.1 36.2 51.9

Imports/VA (%) 5.3 5.7 15.7 13.8 9.9 6.4 4.9

Source: Authors based on data from KOCCA (2012), Content Industry Statistics.

2.2. The ‘smallness’ of the Korean DS market

The most frequent explanation given to the boom of K-pop exports is the small size of the
Korean music market, a direct transposition of a similar argument made for the industrial sector.
However, such an automatic transposition should not be taken as granted because, contrary to
manufacturing, scale economies are not important in many aspects of the DS production: they
are likely to be modest when selling OL or when making concerts. Such economies are
substantial only for the CDs segment which is of marginal importance for many Korean DS
firms. Finally, the Korean music market was even smaller from the 1960s to the 1990s, when

17
This would be the case if K-pop represents only 10 percent of the value added of Korean-made games. To our
knowledge, there is no estimate of the percentage of value added of K-pop music which is incorporated in Korean-
made games.

14
there was no export success. In short, something else than the mere size of the Korean market
should have been at work.

Table 4. The ‘smallness’ of the Korean DS markets

2006 2008 2010

all digital all digital all digital

GDP GDP GDP
music music music music music music

Korea 126 70 952 145 70 931 179 98 1,007

Relative market sizes, with Korea=1

USA 52.7 15.6 14.1 35.4 28.4 15.4 22.8 20.7 14.6
Japan 37.4 7.4 4.6 32.8 13.8 5.2 21.6 10.0 5.4
Britain 13.5 1.5 2.6 9.7 2.8 2.9 7.1 3.5 2.2
Germany 11.9 1.1 3.1 9.9 1.7 3.9 7.4 1.8 3.3
France 9.5 1.1 2.4 5.9 1.8 3.1 4.4 1.5 2.6
Italy 3.2 0.4 2.0 1.8 0.4 2.5 1.2 0.4 2.0
China 0.7 0.5 2.9 0.6 0.8 4.9 0.4 0.5 5.8
Australia 3.9 0.4 0.8 2.9 0.8 1.1 2.1 1.1 1.2
India 0.9 0.1 1.0 0.8 0.4 1.4 0.7 0.6 1.5
Brazil 2.2 0.1 1.1 1.5 0.4 1.8 1.2 0.4 2.1
Korea 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0
Note: Size of the music markets (Digital and Physical sales) in millions of US dollars and billions of
US dollars (GDP).
Source: Authors based on data from KOCCA (2011), IFPI (2011) and IMF (2011).

Indeed, Table 4 does not show the ‘smallness’ factor as such an overwhelming force. The
US, Japan and Britain emerge as the main countries with significantly bigger music markets
than Korea—indeed bigger than what the relative GDP weights would have predicted (for
instance, 20-22 times in 2010 in the US music markets compared to 15 times for the US GDP).
But, the differences are shrinking fast since the mid-2006, precisely when K-pop exports
prosper. And, the other countries have music markets with a similar size than those of Korea,
or even with a smaller relative size than what the relative GDP weights would have predicted.
Another interpretation of the ‘smallness’ factor is the volatility inherent to the Korean DS
markets. Figure 3 which shows the monthly CD sales of the #1 hits in Korea between January
2010 and December 2012 suggests several observations:
• sales are highly volatile since they range from a low 25,000 CDs (December 2012) to
330,000 CDs (September 2012, that is, 6 percent of all the sales of the period covered);

15
 • there is no clear pattern over time: peaks and valleys occur almost randomly over the
years;
• there is even a possible slight decreasing trend of #1 hits sales during these three years
(say after Fall 2011).

Figure 3. A risky business: #1 hits CD monthly sales, 2010-2012

Source: Authors based on data from Gaon Chart provided by KMCIA (Korea Music Content
Industry Association).

In short, blockbusters are rare, very different in magnitude, hard to predict and possibly
less frequent in the most recent period. Indeed, all these features are incentives for Korean DS
firms to look for foreign markets as a key element of their risk-management policy.

2.3. The level of competition in the Korean CD markets

A second driving force behind the K-pop export boom is the level of concentration—hence
competition—in the Korean DS markets. Highly competitive Korean domestic markets should
induce Korean DS firms to look for ‘easier’ markets in the rest of the world.
A separate analysis of the level of concentration in the CDs and OL markets is necessary
because the Korean DS firms’ determined strategy to charge very low download prices has
divided the Korean music markets into these two segments much more sharply than in any
other industrial country:

16
 • the OL segment is the one where Korean consumers can test every possible new DS
title since it is so cheap to listen to and to watch new releases.
• by contrast, the CDs market is the one where Korean consumers satisfy their deep
preferences—it is the market for the ‘fans’. 18 CDs of the K-pop bands are conceived by
the Korean DS firms more as ‘collectors’ than as mere CDs. They target a ‘fan’ base
that needs to be satisfied on an almost permanent basis because of the very close links
between the K-pop stars and their fans (the status among fans is partly determined by
the number of CDs owned). While CDs are the ‘product-based’ link between a band
and its fans, concerts reserved for the fans are the ‘service-based’ link. Indeed, new
CDs are often released in conjunction with concerts for the fans. This core function of
the CDs explains the amazing profusion of different types of CDs (full albums, mini-
CDs, pre-released and re-masterized versions, etc.) in the Korean DS sector.
As a result, the following analysis of the level of concentration in the Korean DS markets
considers five different markets:
• the #1hits CDs market and the Top10 hits CDs market; the #1hits CDs market is taken
into account because it is such a key element of the success record of a DS firm;
• the Top10 downloads (Gaon Chart) and the Top10 streaming (Gaon Chart) hits for the
non-visual OL (NVOL) markets;
• the Top10 hits in the visual OL (YouTube) segment; this segment is the one which
focuses most on the visual element of the K-pop wave.
It should be stressed that prices vary a lot among these five markets: they are substantial for
the CDs market, low for the NVOL markets, and nil for the YouTube segment.
Table 5 summarizes the main results (for details see Annex 2). It is divided in two blocks.
Block A looks at the concentration in terms of titles and K-pop bands. Hence, it reflects the
level of competition viewed from the perspective of the Korean final consumers. Block B
examines the concentration in terms of Korean DS firms: it is thus better suited to capture the
market power of these firms with respect to the upstream contributors to the Korean DS
production (songwriters, choreographers, etc.).

Table 5. Market concentration from the perspectives of consumers and producers

18
It is important to realize the power that the ‘fans’ can have in certain circumstances. In the legal dispute that
opposed SM and JYJ (three performers from the TVXQ band who argued that their contract was too long and
unfair) the threat of a petition filed by 120,000 members of the TVXQ fan club supporting JYJ was a key factor.

17
 (1) (2) (3) (4) (5)
CD CD Downloads Streaming YouTube
#1 Top10 Top10 Top10 Top10
2010.1-2012.12 2010.1-2013.3 2010.1-2012.12 2010.1-2012.12 2010.1-2012.12
(Monthly) (Monthly) (Annually) (Annually) (Annually)

A. Concentration from the K-bands (final consumers) perspective

Number of bands 16 88 23 24 12
Number of titles 31 270 30 30 20
Herfindahl index 0.1361 0.0715 0.0553 0.0480 0.4055
Four most successful bands
band 1 Super Junior Super Junior T-ara Sistar Psy
band 2 Girls Generation Girls Generation Sistar IU Big Bang
band 3 Big Bang Big Bang Big Bang Busker Busker 2NE1
band 4 TVXQ TVXQ Miss A T-ara Girls Generation
C4 coefficient 64.6 42.1 34.8 28.7 82.6
B. Concentration from the K-firms (upstream contributors) perspective
Number of firms 9 47 16 16 6
Number of titles 31 270 30 30 20
Herfindahl index [a] 0.4371 0.1439 0.0850 0.0938 0.6328
Herfindahl index [b] 0.3111 0.0639 0.0822 0.0911 0.3200
Four most successful firms
firm 1 SM SM YG YG YG
firm 2 YG YG JYP JYP SM
firm 3 C-JES C-JES Core Content CJ E&M Cube Ent.
firm 4 Rain Ent. FNC Music Starship Ent. Starship Ent. DSP
C4 coefficient 88.5 58.1 47.9 49.6 97.0
Source: Authors based on data from Gaon Chart provided by KMCIA (Korea Music Content
Industry Association) and YouTube.

Focusing first on the final consumers side (block A) the K-pop bands/titles provide three
observations:
• a first measure of concentration (the Herfindahl index which is the sum of the squares
of the market shares of the bands/titles) is low in the CD and NVOL markets, hence
mirrors a highly competitive market for Korean consumers. This index is high for the
YouTube segment, reflecting the exceptional case of Psy’s ‘Gangnam Style’. The less
exceptional success of ‘Gentleman’ strongly suggests that ‘Gangnam Style’ is an outlier:
eliminating this title would decrease the Herfindahl index to a low 0.1371, in line with
the other markets.

18
 • a complementary measure of the concentration (the C4 coefficient which is the sum of
the market shares of the four largest bands) shows a notable concentration in the CDs
market. It is smaller for the NVOL markets, as it could be expected since the OL
markets offer many more opportunities of varieties than the CDs markets. The C4
coefficient is again very high in the YouTube segment (the ‘Gangnam Style’ effect);
but, eliminating ‘Gangnam Style’ would decrease the C4 to a still high 63.2.
• an unexpected and very interesting result is that only one K-pop band (Big Bang)
pertains to the C4 set in all the markets. Indeed, there is a sharp difference among the
C4 K-pop bands emerging in the CDs, NVOL and YouTube markets, suggesting that
the mere existence of these various channels contributes to the variety of K-pop titles. 19
Shifting the focus to the Korean DS firms and their upstream contributors (block B of Table
5) suggests also three observations:
• the Herfindahl indexes in the CDs and YouTube markets are substantially higher than
those prevailing in the final consumers perspective. For the #1hits, it is even (much)
above the threshold (0.2500) which is analyzed as a situation of market power by the
US competition authorities. In sharp contrast, the Herfindahl index remains low in the
NVOL markets, again reflecting the much higher variety of choices allowed by the OL
technologies.
• the C4 coefficients are also systematically and significantly higher than their level in
the final consumers markets, mirroring the fact that the major Korean DS firms manage
several K-pop bands.
• The same unexpected and very interesting result is that only YG pertains to the C4 club
in the five markets, with SM and JYP not in the top C4 in two of these markets
(respectively, OL and CDs). 20
To sum up, the level of competition in the Korean DS markets—very competitive markets
with respect to the final consumers with some elements of dominance in the upstream
markets—does generate incentives for Korean DS firms to look for ‘easier’ foreign markets in
the rest of the world where to prosper.

2.4. Prices and revenues in Korea and in the rest of the world: the big rift

19
Surprisingly, Psy is not ranked among the Top10 CDs sales, and he does not pertain to the C4 bands in the
CD and NVOL markets (he is only 6th and 7th in the download and streaming markets, respectively).
20
One may wonder whether this result does not reflect to some extent the origins of the founders of these three
firms (the former singer being more in tune with the CD markets, the former dancer with the OL markets

19
 The last force (from a supply side perspective) behind the K-pop export boom flows from
the fact that Korean prices of K-pop are much lower than the corresponding ones in the rest of
the world—hence driving all K-pop actors (firms and stars) to go abroad [Cho 2012].

Table 6. Differences between Korean prices and prices in the rest of the world

Downloading Streaming Level of

Rate
Country Unit price of song performer's revenue IPR
(monthly)
Korea fee Korea Korea
Won
A=1 (%)
Won
A=1
Won
A=1
2000 2010
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9)
Korea
case A 105 1 40 42 1 3,000 1 3.9 4.1

case B 600 6 40 240 6 5,000 -- 3.9 4.1

1,102~1,43
case C 6
11~14 40 450~587 11~14 -- -- 3.9 4.1

Australia 1,843 18 55 1066 25 -- 5.9 5.6

11,49
Canada 1,552 15 55 857 20
0
3.8 6.3 5.6
1,339~1,67 17,60
EU-Britain 8
11~14 55 633~793 15~19
0
5.9 6.3 5.5
13,90
EU-France 2,138 21 55 1194 28
5
4.6 6.1 5.9
EU- 10,82
1,421 14 55 793 19 3.6 6.1 5.7
Germany 3
10,92
Japan 2,718 27 55 1564 37
8
3.6 5.4 5.2
11,49
U.S 998~1,447 10~14 55 549~796 13~19
0
3.8 6.3 5.1
Notes: Korea case A: price per song for downloading a package of 100 to 150 songs per month. Korea
case B: price per song in the “hold-back system” implemented since March. 2013 (“hold-back system”
allows IPR holders to guarantee of a certain level income from the newly released songs by requiring
music service providers to hold back the sales of the songs at the discounted rate: the service providers
should sell the songs at the set price (600 won) for a period of time. Korea case C: price per song on
mp3 charged by Amazon. For these comparisons, and exchange rate of 1$ 1,100 Korean Won has
been used (for details see Annex 3).
Source: Authors based on data from iTunes, Amazon, and Korean internet retail stores (Melon,
Soribada, etc.) (columns 1 to 7) and on the IPR index of the World Economic Forum (columns 8 and
9). 21

Table 6 gives a sense of the big rift between Korean and foreign OL prices:

21
The World Economic Forum IPR index is constructed based on a survey of CEOs to capture experiential or
perception on the IPR regimes that influence the business and investment in the market.

20
 • Column 1 gives the Korean and foreign prices of downloading music as of April 2013.
Column 2 presents the same information by indexing all the prices on the Korean price
(case A): foreign prices range from 10 times (US low range) to 27 times (Japan) the
comparable Korean case A price.
• Column 3 gives the share of the price received by the performers, column 4 calculates
their corresponding revenue. Column 5 shows that the revenue for Korean performers
range from 13 times (US low range) to 37 times (Japan) the revenue earned in Korea
for the same title.
• Columns 6 and 7 provide similar information on the prices for streaming. The price
differentials are much smaller, but they are still substantial, with foreign prices 4 to 6
times higher than those in Korea, and with roughly the same ranking in terms of the
‘most’ profitable countries.
These results deserve a caveat. Table 6 does not take into account the fact that costs in
foreign countries could be higher than those in Korea (hence justifying higher prices). However,
the observed price differences are so large that it seems unlikely that they could be reversed by
costs differences in the OL business.
Table 6 suggests a desirable strategy to K-pop stars: they should target first Japan—by far
the most profitable market—then France and the other EU markets, and then the US, with the
caveat that the US market can generate larger reputation effects than any other country.
Interestingly, this conclusion fits well the observed behavior of the K-pop stars.

2.5. The K-pop sector and the intellectual property rights issue

During the 2000s, Korea has begun to implement a regime of intellectual property rights
(IPRs) increasingly similar to the ones enforced in other OECD Members. 22 Paradoxically,
during the same decade, this regime has been under increasing criticisms in the OECD
countries. At the core of the debate is the economic impact of IPR which is very sensitive to
the quality of the IPR regulations and of their implementation. Too lax IPR or too loosely

22
This evolution is still not complete, as best illustrated by a recent ruling of the Seoul Central District Court
[Korea Time April 2013] according to which digital music files transmitted by online music service providers in
the context of a department store cannot be seen as ‘albums for sale’, hence are not eligible for royalties to be
paid to copyright owners. The lawsuit was filed by the Federation of Korean Music Performers (FKMP) and the
Korean Association of Phonogram Producers (KAPP) against Hyundai Department Store demanding payment
of 240 million won for using digital music files. Such a conclusion would not be possible in some OECD
countries where such fees are automatically levied in similar circumstances.

21
enforced IPR may reduce the desirable production of goods or services. But too strong IPR or
too tightly enforced IPR fuel anti-competitive behavior [Furukawa 2010].
These criticisms are particularly strong in the DS sector because IPR are particularly
developed in this sector where IPR protect not only songwriters, but also performers and DS
firms involved in the production and distribution of the titles. 23 Such a tight IPR regime in the
DS sector has raised questions from OECD consumers and policy-makers [Aguiar and Martens
2013] such as: why do IPR last so long? Why do they last after the death of the songwriters,
and protect his/her heirs? Why do they include DS firms as right-holders, particularly when the
price of producing music is declining thanks to electronic techniques? As a result, the OECD
countries have witnessed resistance to IPR in the 2000s (the fights on P2P in music a few years
ago, on the ‘torrent’ technique in film today, etc.). 24
Interestingly, such a tight IPR regime generates uneasiness even among songwriters and
among those who value artistic works. Songwriters generally compose above all because they
want to ‘create’ (maximizing their profits are not their main concern). In a interview, Rain
[KBS World 2010] echoes this crucial point: ‘I know the problems generated by illegal
downloading, but I cannot use the logic of the market for my musical creation; that is
unacceptable to me; I don’t want to be safe and this is why I spend so much time and money
on my albums’ (based on the English sub-titled translation). Meanwhile, those who value art
wonder whether the tight IPR regime currently enforced in the OECD countries would have
allowed them to enjoy reading the second part of ‘Don Quixote’. 25
In this context, it is very interesting to note that, in the 2000s, the various actors of the
Korean DS sector—stars and firms—have generated innovative alternatives to the OECD
model of IPR legal regime.
On their side, K-pop stars have always been willing and able to ‘internalize’ IPR issues,
making an OECD-type IPR regime of little use for them, if any. A first option is best illustrated
by Rain who has composed his own songs, made his own choreographies, and owned his own

23
This section focuses on all the operators (firms, content providers, collecting societies, etc.) which are
marketing copyrighted works. It does not discuss the fact that copyrights also protect the integrity of the work
and the expression.
24
This is best illustrated by « Pirat Parties” favoring liberal reforms of copyright laws in Europe which have had
their most important successes in Germany and Sweden. The Pirat Party has 45 seats in various Parliaments of
German States, and 2 seats at the European Parliament (both from Sweden).
25
In 1605, Cervantes published the Book I of ‘Don Quixote’. But he was very slow to write his Book II. He might
have never written it without the publication of a book written by Alonso Fernandez de Avellaneda and presented
as the sequel of Cervantes’ Book I. In short, the absence of IPR forced Cervantes to go back to work (he published
his Book II in 1615)—delivering a priceless treasury to the Spanish and world literature.

22
firm. 26 The wide ranging education that K-pop stars receive during their in-house training
period helps them to achieve such a goal. An alternative option is best illustrated by BoA who
owns shares of the DS firm (SM) which manages her.
On their side, Korean DS firms have faced two different IPR problems.
Their first problem is related to the K-pop performers: a Korean DS firm needs to minimize
the risks that performers quit the firm when they become well-known The band structure helps
to manage such risks: by ensuring that any member of the band needs the other members, it
increases the costs of leaving the band; at the same time, it can be flexible enough to give some
degree of freedom to (a) performer(s) by creating autonomous units within the band. Available
evidence suggests that only 5 percent of the performers of the three major Korean DS firms
have changed firms since 2000. 27
The Korean DS firms’ second problem is the risk of piracy on the consumption side. The
best way to fight piracy is to adopt a ‘limit pricing’ strategy, that is, to set the price of DS titles
not at the monopoly level, but at a level low enough to discourage piracy. In the Korea of the
late 1990s with little IPR enforcement, ‘limit pricing’ meant sale prices for downloads close to
zero. 28 Since then, prices have increased but, as shown by Table 6, they remain still very low—
raising the question of why increasing prices only ‘now’ and ‘modestly’.
• the answer to the ‘now’ part can be found in Table 3. The boom of K-pop exports is
recent: it started only in 2008, it was preceded by sluggish years and bad experiences,
and K-pop remains a very risky business (see Figure 3)—all factors that can explain the
still careful confidence of the Korean DS firms in the K-pop ‘miracle’.
• answering the ‘modestly’ part is more complex. 29 The Korean DS firms may hesitate
to increase prices because Korean consumers are highly skilled in software and
equipped with the most advanced technology—hence have the ingredients to evade
notable price increases. However, the key answer seems to involve Korean internet-
providers (Melon, Soribada, etc.) and their telecom parent companies. These firms may
want to limit the risk of foreign competitors entering the Korean OL market, hence are

26
It is not rare that Western pop singers compose their own songs. But, they rarely do their own choreography
and create their own firm—a feature shared by Jay-Z and Rain who are currently negotiating a contract.
27
Estimate based on the 221 names of current and past performers listed in Wikipedia’s entries for SM, YG and
JYP. But, 63 former trainees of one of these firms are managed by another (almost always Korean) DS firm.
28
This situation has much to do with the role of music in Joseon Korea. After the Restoration Coup of King
Injo (1623) entertainers were banned from the Royal Court (contrary to what was happening in Europe) and
entertainment became mostly a popular activity—with a focus on dance in Eastern Korea and on music in
Western Korea, and with lively contests among bands organized by cities (little to envy to today TV shows…).
29
There is a planned annual increase from 105 won in 2013 to 150 won in 2015.

23
 reluctant to let their OL prices coming close to Amazon’s price (see Korea case C in
Table 6). Despite some efforts in 2010-2011, the major Korean DS firms have so far
not been able to offer a workable alternative to this situation.
Are the K-pop solutions to the IPR issues ‘better’ than the OECD typical approach—that
is, do they offer more or better incentives to create? Answering this question goes much beyond
this paper. But, columns 8 and 9 of Table 6 do not suggest any positive correlation between the
IPR indexes and the dynamism of the DS segment. Rather, the countries with the highest IPR
indexes (France, Germany) have completely failed to export their DS production to the world.
Meanwhile, the low IPR index for Korea has not prevented the K-pop to start from nothing and
to generate the current world tidal wave—offering the latest illustration of the ‘Cervantes
syndrome’.

SECTION 3. THE ‘SUSTAINABILITY’ OF THE K-POP WAVE

Is this so unexpected K-pop wave ‘sustainable’? Will it be a hype limited to a narrow niche
of the vast entertainment world, as it is so often the case in this industry? Or will it nurture
more Korean waves in other entertainment sectors? Finally, would some public policies help
for ensuring K-pop sustainability?
From the outset, it should be stressed that nothing in entertainment and art is sustainable:
neo-classicism, baroque, impressionism, etc. have all peaked and then left the room to other
artistic movements. ‘Change’ is the rule. As a result, the sustainability question should be
rephrased as the question on ‘how to change’.

3.1. Change by ‘deepening’

A first way to change is to ‘deepen’ what is currently done in terms of production processes
and contents. This is already happening in terms of processes with the ‘internationalization’ of
K-pop: bands integrate performers from other Asian countries or create ‘twin’ K-pop bands
with the same name but two languages (Exo-K and Exo-M); firms have an increasing recourse
to songwriters and choreographers from all over the world; there is an increasing number of
events outside Korea, etc.
This internationalization process should not present major challenges to the Korean DS
firms. These firms rely on firm-specific skills (in-house academies, songwriters, etc.)

24
embedded in a vertically integrated structure surrounded by sub-contractors and immerged in
competitive markets. Such features make difficult for competitors to mimic quickly the Korean
DS firms (it took two to three decades for the non-Japanese car producers to absorb the lessons
of the Japanese car producers). That said, it remains to be seen whether this internationalization
process will keep the ‘Koreanness’ (see the conclusion) feature of the current K-pop wave.
Some Korean DS firms may opt for carefully keeping the ‘K’ of K-pop while others may put
aside this feature in an effort to become simply ‘pop’ firms.
On the contents side, ‘deepening’ is ongoing for the visual part of the K-pop, with frequent
innovations in the ways bands dance and music videos are created. Another obvious ‘deepening’
option would be to write lyrics on topics other than love stories among young people. This
option is still largely unchartered by the current K-pop wave, but it looks both attractive and
pressing because the first generation of K-pop stars and of their fans is now well in their early
thirties—facing a range of new challenges and emotions in their life.

3.2. Change by ‘diversifying’

Another way to change is to turn to other activities. Figure 1 shows a long list of
alternatives: musical comedies, ballads, music of all kinds (electro, R&B…), etc. There are
already plenty of examples of such diversifications in the wake of the K-pop wave. Some of
them are given by K-pop performers who, for instance, interpret pieces of classical European
music with their K-pop spirited guitar or with a mix of Korean traditional instruments and B-
boying. Others examples involve Korean performers who do not pertain to the K-pop wave,
such as U-Angel-Voice, a male group singing traditional Korean and European songs. Once
again, all these options are not equally easy for Korean performers: some options (singing) are
crowded and prone to substantial ‘natural’ barriers (language).
But, there are many other diversification options than those listed in Figure 1. In fact, all
the activities intensive in images—in which dancers have a huge advantage—are candidates:
movies, TV dramas and shows, advertising, fashion, etc. There are already plenty of examples
of such diversifications—from individual cases (movie actors such as Kim Hyon Joong, Kim
Joon, Rain, etc.) to Korean DS firms (SM and its subsidiaries devoted to satisfy every possible
desire of the fans of its bands, YG and its links with the fashion world, etc.).
The success of the diversification process relies heavily on the capacity of the current K-
pop wave to create a larger and wider stock of capital of artistic talents by developing and
widening the skills of the current K-pop stars. History suggests that this process of capital
25
accumulation is usually slow and limited. 30 It remains to be seen whether the in-house
academies and vertical integration which characterize the K-pop wave will produce better
results. Anecdotic evidence (based on the number of Facebook hits) shows that six out of the
ten most popular Korean actors in early 2013 are coming from K-pop bands, a sign that the
diversification and capital accumulation process is actively ongoing. 31

3.3. A role for public policies?

As deepening and diversifying are not easy processes, is there a role for public policies?
Available evidence cautions strongly against a recourse to public policies.
First, the previous sections have stressed the absolutely decisive role of the Korean DS
firms in the K-pop wave. Similar market and price conditions would not have delivered the
same tidal wave in the absence of the Korean firms’ strategy—their choice of a neglected niche,
their building of skills, their reliance on vertical integration, etc. And, this K-pop wave which
has a much wider reach than Korean TV dramas has benefited from insignificant public support.
Second, the high level of patronage in Europe from the 10th to the 19th centuries needs to
be correctly interpreted. Popes, kings and princes have spent lavish fortunes on painters,
musicians, architects, etc. during all these centuries. But all these rulers were not modern states.
Each of them was an individual who risked his/her personal fortune, reputation and pride as a
better ‘art connoisseur’ than his/her pairs. Modern states do not share this essential feature of
patronage, hence have a high propensity to be captured by vested interests ultimately
detrimental to the ‘culture’ they claim to defend [Cocq and Messerlin 2004].
Last, a quick look of what happened to J-pop (Japanese pop music, much fashionable in
the 1990s in East Asia) and to ‘F-pop’ suggests that excessive regulations (intellectual property
rights in Japan or France, music broadcasting in France) and public subsidies (movies in France)
have slowly but surely smothered the creativity and the desire of the Japanese and French
performers to go abroad and to deliver a message of ‘Japanness’ and ‘Frenchness’ to the rest
of the world. For instance, the French traditional pop music has reached its peak in the 1950s-
1970s, but since then has almost completely disappeared from the world stage despite
increasing public support. Meanwhile, the ‘French Touch’ (groups or individuals such as Daft

30
For instance, there are very few diversification successes in the French pop music, the most notable being
Yves Montand who was first a backdancer, then a singer (with little dance again since the technology of the
1970s and 1980s could not reward this skill) and finally an internationally known actor.
31
However, these six actors represent only 47 percent of the total hits for the ten most popular actors. Based on
http://koreanartistsnews.blogspot.fr/2011/09/10-most-popular-korean-stars-2011.html, February 2013.

26
Punk or David Guetta) is florishing with an internet-based strategy very similar to K-pop and
with no public support (the French Touch is using electronic instruments as a source of
comparative advantages).
That said, there may be one exception to this non-interference of public policies in
entertainment. As evoked above, Korea’s peculiar price structure may reflect the use of ‘limit
pricing’ by the internet providers and their telecom owners with the intention to eliminate
potential competitors. A thorough analysis of this situation—of its costs and benefits—would
be welcome, and the best institution to do so in an economically sound manner is the
competition authority.

CONCLUSION. BEYOND ECONOMICS: ON THE ‘KOREANNESS’ OF THE K-POP WAVE

While the world is looking with amazement to this totally unexpected K-pop wave,
Koreans wonder whether K-pop is sending some profound messages from and about Korea to
the rest of the world. This conclusion examines briefly this issue.

‘Koreanness’

What follows uses the notion of ‘Koreanness’ rather than Korean culture for several
reasons: 32
• today, the term ‘culture’ is often opposed to business and entertainment. This
opposition is very recent (it was unknown until the late 19th century) and it does not fit
well the European art reality of the past centuries. 33 In fact, today Korean DS firms
have many similarities with the European painters’ studios of the 14th-19th centuries:
in-house training, vertical integration, loose (by today much criticized OECD standards)
intellectual property rights, and the use of the artists (painters in the past, K-pop stars
today) in quasi-official (ambassadorial) positions.

32
Similarly, one would prefer to use the term ‘Frenchness’ to French culture, for instance.
33
For instance, most European painters of the 15th-19th centuries have run large, highly profitable studios, with
many “assistants” specialized in landscape, flowers, animals, etc. Raphael or Rubens had several dozen
assistants each, with some of them becoming later as famous as their former ‘masters’ (Romano in the case of
Raphael or van Dyck in the case of Rubens). Moreover, many of these famous artists were heavily involved in
official positions, such as special envoys to other princely Courts.

27
 • the term ‘culture’ is limited to the ‘physical assets’ that a country has inherited from its
past: books, music, paintings, architecture, etc. It ignores the country’s ‘human assets’,
namely the individual attitudes that today citizens of the country in question follow in
public and that are so critical for delivering the messages from a country.
• art history shows that it is not rare that foreigners capture and/or shape better the essence
of a country than its own nationals. For instance, Chopin (a Pole) or Haendel (a German)
are essential in French and British music, respectively. 34
For all these reasons, the notion of Korean culture seems too narrow. It almost inevitably
focuses on the Confucian heritage from the Korean upper class under the Joseon Dynasty, and
leads inevitably to the conclusion that K-pop channels no ‘Korean’ message to the rest of the
world: ‘The Korean Wave in general and K-pop in particular is naked commercialism [..]. It
would be too much [..] to regard this as having anything to do with traditional Confucian,
Korean culture.’ [Lie 2012 page 362].

The two Korean heritages of the K-pop wave

In sharp contrast, the Koreanness approach opens a wider perspective which suggests that
indeed, the K-pop wave is the recipient of two Korean heritages—not one. 35
First, there is the heritage from the rural popular Namsadang dances which has little to do
with the Confucian heritage: there could not be stronger contrast that the one between the
Joseon very slow moving Court dances and the agitated K-pop dancers. But, this first heritage
channels two profoundly Korean feelings which are extremely attractive to modern European
audiences:
• it expresses sorrow and frustration (‘han’), a frequent feeling among today distressed
(especially young) Europeans. This sorrow is deeply embedded in the Korean people
because of Korea’s long and turbulent history. 36

34
For their title ‘Catch Me’, TVXQ has visual effects very similar to the traditional Korean “Fan Dance’. If this
parenthood is correct, then it would be interesting to know whether the choreographer is Korean, or not.
35
A ‘double’ heritage is not unusual in the world art history. A parallel can be made with the Dutch painting
school of the 16-17th centuries which has been so influential in Europe. A large segment of this school focuses on
the daily life of ordinary Dutch people with a fascination for its rude aspects (cats and dogs competing with dirty
kids for food, explicit love scenes, drunk people, etc.) which have little to do with the other main ‘branch’ of
Dutch paintings focusing on aristocratic values, gods and goddesses, etc. But, both branches are essential to get a
great sense of ‘Dutchness’, as well as a sense of universality.
36
Korea’s history exhibits frequent internal feudal wars until the 11th century, fragmented ruling elites after the
th
12 century, several destructive invasions from Japan, Mongolia and China (16th-17th centuries), the ‘unequal
treaties’ with the Western powers (late 19th century), thirty five years of Japanese colonial rule (1910-1945), and

28
 • it is ‘fighting’ this sorrow by developing an intense energy. 37 This energy is familiar to
the Europeans to the extent that it has some affinity with African-based Western music,
including with its capacity to lead to situations close to ‘trance’ [Lee Oi-soo 2013]. But,
this energy is also totally new to the Europeans because it tries hard to bring back joy
and cheer—whereas most of today Western performers deliver an oppressing sense of
inertia, darkness and doom.
The second heritage of the K-pop bands is plain Confucian. It is not shown on the stage but
it is revealed by the public behavior of the K-pop stars during their interviews and other events
with their fans. Almost systematically in such public appearances, the K-pop performers
deliver a sense of modesty and restraint, insist on working hard and learning more (in-house
academies have a definitively Confucian touch), and show the K-pop bands run as families
with a sense of hierarchy (the senior, the junior, the pairing of members, the one who does the
dishes, etc.). All these attitudes are in sharp contrast with those of the vast majority of European
(and US) pop stars who insist on their right to have no restraint, don’t talk much on the need
and benefits of hard work, and emphasize their individuality. 38
The public attitudes of the K-pop stars are so different from those of the Western performers
that they raise among their non-Korean fans the desire to know more about what pushes the K-
pop stars to act like this—hence about what ‘Korea really is’ and what ‘Korea has to tell them’.
Two pieces of evidence reveal this curiosity. First, the K-pop wave has clearly triggered in
Europe the recent boom in learning Korean. 39 Second, when interviewed on the reasons for
being attracted by K-pop, Europeans (teens or their parents, recent immigrants or long-lasting
citizens) often say that the K-pop offers ‘other values’ than the ones to which they are exposed
in Europe. When asked to explain what they mean by ‘new values’, Europeans often cite
respect, modesty, kindness [Arirang 2013]. Universal, these values are at the core of the
Confucian message that is thus channeled by K-pop performers’ in their day-to-day attitudes
with their fans and public.

three years of a partly fratricide Korean War (1950-1953) which have nothing to envy, in terms of chaos and
devastations, to the worst years of the Second World War in Europe.
37
The term ‘fighting’ is an expression that Koreans love to use in almost all circumstances. It echoes traditional
Pumba, the singing beggars who show that cheering is possible even in poverty.
38
Europeans seem to have a different perception of the K-pop performers than South East Asians. In South East
Asia, the dominant perception of the K-pop stars is based on identity—the K-pop performers are the spoke-
persons of some kind of ‘Asianness’. In Europe, the dominant perception seems to be based on ‘difference’—
the K-pop performers are the spoke-persons of ‘new values’.
39
This boom exists even if one takes into account the high rate of drops-out after one or two years. Such a
drop-out rate reflects partly the difficulty to learn an Asian language which does surprize many Europeans,
accustomed to learn much easier (because often related) other European languages.

29
 Crucial for foreign fans, this Koreanness dimension of K-pop is not very visible for most
Koreans, if only for a simple reason: such public attitudes are expected in Korea, making
difficult for Koreans to perceive their novelty in the rest of the world. But, there may be two
deeper reasons behind Koreans’ doubts.
First is the fear that foreigners will not go beyond fleeting emotions triggered by four-
minutes dances or songs. In fact, K-pop should be best seen as a ‘door’ to what is Korea and to
what past and present Koreans have to say. Its worldwide success shows that this door per se
is very attractive to vast non-Korean crowds. And if the pool of talents accumulated by the K-
pop wave will progressively spread to and succeed in other entertainment and art sectors, it
will deliver increasingly deeper and richer messages from Korea.
Since the first version of this paper, the music video ‘Unbreakable’ by Kim Hyun Joong,
featuring Jay Park, has been released. It offers an excellent illustration of this ‘door’ function of K-pop.
In two minutes and half (the last minute is typical K-pop pure energy in dance, echoing Rain’s MV
“Rainism”) this video presents no less than eight aspects of traditional Korean popular culture—from
Korean dancers with sangmo hats to Korean drums to Salpuri and calligraphy. For Koreans, these quick
references may not deliver an impression of Koreanness. But, there is little doubt that these references
have triggered the curiosity of many non-Korean watchers of the video who have then gone to internet
in order to know more about these aspects of Korean traditions (in less than three months, this video
has received 2.5 million clicks).
The second source of Koreans’ doubts is the fear that the Korean culture of the grand-
parents’ or parents’ of the K-pop generation is too much receding in front of an amorphous,
often corrosive ‘modern’ culture. 40 This fear is not specific to Koreans. It is shared by many
people: the above quoted Europeans have a very similar fear. They feel that, during the few
last decades, the universal values mentioned above (respect, modesty, kindness, etc.) have been
deeply eroded in Europe—hence their profound aspiration to re-introduce them, as well
captured by European scholars. 41
Such an aspiration is unlikely to be appealing to young Europeans if it is only based on
nostalgia or thinking. Young Europeans may be much more attracted and convinced by the
double Koreanness of a lively K-pop—intense raw energy on stage and restrained Confucian

40
In this respect, the debate on Psy’s ‘Gentleman’ is interesting. Some of ‘Gentleman’ music video images
have been seen as too ‘un-Confucian’ by some Koreans (for instance, the music-video has been banned on
KBS). In this respect, the K-pop wave has probably lessons to learn from Korean TV dramas. A recent study
[Song 2012] shows that the world audience has some specific expectations from Korean dramas per se: less
sexuality and violence, more focus on family relationships (between parents and children and amongst children)
on children born outside the family, etc.
41
See the work of philosophers such as Comte-Sponville [2001] in France.

30
public attitude out of the stage. This flamboyant contrast has the great privilege to make the
aspiration to these essential values a new, colorful and cheerful start—not the restoration of
an old order.

REFERENCES

Aguiar, Luis and Bertin Martens, 2013. Digital music consumption on the Internet: Evidence
from clickstream data, JRC Technical Reports, Working paper 2013/04.
Cho, Bernie, 2012. The Hip Hype Reality behind the K-pop Wave, October, DFSB Kollective.
Cocq, Emmanuel and Patrick Messerlin, 2004. Preparing Negotiations in Services: EC
Audiovisuals in the Doha Round, in P. Messerlin, E. Cocq and S. Siwek The
Audiovisual Services, AEI Studies in Services Negotiations, Washington, DC.
Comte-Sponville, André. 2001. Petit traité des grandes vertus. Seuil, Paris.
Furukawa, Yuichi, 2010, Intellectual property protection and innovation: an inverted-U
relationship, Economic Letters 109(2): 99-101.
KOCCA, Music Industry White Paper 2011, ” Korea Creative Content Agency, 2011.
Lee, Oi-soo, 2013, The INNERview, ‘A look at Korean Art and Culture 2013’, Arirang TV
http://www.arirang.co.kr/TV2/sports_interview.asp?F_Key=133&sys_lang=Eng&Pag
e=1
Lie, John, 2012, hat is the K in K-pop? South Korean Popular Music, the Culture Industry, and
National Identity, Korea Observer, The Institute of Korean Studies, Vol. 43, N.3,
Autumn, pp.339-363.
Liu, Wan-Ju, 2012, A Competitiveness Analysis on K-pop, Graduate School of International
Studies, Seoul National University. Master Thesis in International Commerce. Mimeo.
MCST and KOCCA, 2012 Content Industry Statistics, Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism
and Korea Creative Content Agency, 2013.
Rain, 2010, Star Date, May, KBS World, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYeShCBJR94
Russell, Mark James, Pop goes Korea: behind the revolution in movies, music, and Internet
culture, Stone Bridge Press, 2008
Song, Sunguk, 2012, TV drama and Korean Wave: Research about the original form of Korean
drama and its potential (in Korean), Lectures series at the Hallyu Graduate School at
Catholic University of Korea, Mimeo.

31
ANNEX 1. The K-pop concerts in Taiwan (March 2009 ~ December 2012)

This list deserves two observations. First is the huge number of concerts, including for the
most famous K-pop bands. On average, there is 1.5 K-pop concert per month over this period.
And, for instance, SuperJunior alone has had 5 concerts during this brief period of three years
and nine months. Second, there is an almost identical number of concerts reserved to fans and
of ‘regular’ concerts open to everybody.

Number of
Bands
Regular Concerts Concerts for Fans
2AM - 1
2PM 1 -
Andy 1 1
BEAST 1 2
Boyfriend - 1
CN Blue 1 1
F.cuz - 1
F.T Island 2 1
Girls Generation 2 -
Jay Park 1 -
JUNJIN - 1
JYJ 1 -
KARA - 1
Kim, Hyung-jun - 3
Kim, Kyu-jong - 1
Lee, Jun-ki 1 -
Park, Jung-ming - 1
Rain 2 -
Shin, Hye-sung 1 2
SHINee 1 1
SHINHWA 1 -
SS501 1 1
SuperJunior 3 2
TEENTOP - 1
The Boss - 1
TVXQ - 1
U-KISS - 1
Various Artists 4 -
Total 24 25
Source: Authors based on Liu [2012].

32
ANNEX 2. Data description as reference data for Table 5

Tables 5A and 5B in the text present the summary statistics of the concentration in terms
of titles, bands and Korean DS firms for five music markets. What follows gives the detailed
data and the main information on the sources.
Data for the five music markets CDs, Downloads, Streaming, and YouTube at the level of
unit song by singer for January 2010~March 2013 has been compiled by the authors from the
Gaon Chart and YouTube website which is publicly available at http://www.gaonchart.co.kr/ and
http://www.youtube.com/. Data for CD hits (Top 1 and Top10) are on a monthly basis while for
Downloads, Streaming, and YouTube hits (Top 10) are on annual basis.
These data offer a good picture of the markets: generally the 11th hit is less than 3 percent
of the aggregated number of hits from Top 1 to 10 for all cases. As a result, it is assumed that
the sum of the Top 10 of each music hits is large enough to represent the whole market. In
other words, the number of CDs, downloads, streaming, and YouTube sold for all the titles not
included in the Top10 list is assumed to be too small to modify substantially the estimates of
the level of concentration in the Korean DS markets.
It should be stressed that prices are substantial for the CDs, small for the downloads and
Streaming, nil for YouTube.

A. Concentration from the K-bands (final consumers) perspective

Table 5A-1. Concentration of monthly CD #1 hits, by K-pop bands
No. of Titles Band HHI
Bands Firms Hits Share Sex
Titles shares birth (5bis)
Super Junior SM 1,087,927 23.4 4 5.8 M 2005 0.055
Girls' Generation SM 1,006,265 21.6 5 4.3 F 2007 0.047
Big Bang YG 511,848 11.0 4 2.8 M 2006 0.012
TVXQ SM 396,537 8.5 2 4.3 M 2003 0.007
G-G dragon YG 302,430 6.5 2 3.3 M 2009 0.004
SHINee SM 271,446 5.8 2 2.9 M 2008 0.003
JYJ JYJ 230,718 5.0 2 2.5 M 2010 0.002
Rain Rain 208,322 4.5 1 4.5 M 2007 0.002
2NE1 YG 179,839 3.9 2 1.9 F 2009 0.001
Kim Hyun Joong Key East 100,433 2.2 1 2.2 M 2011 0.000
Beast CUBE 90,000 1.9 1 1.9 M 2009 0.000
BoA SM 64,131 1.4 1 1.4 F 2000 0.000
Kim Sung Gyu Woollim 62,958 1.4 1 1.4 M 2012 0.000
Exo K SM 61,333 1.3 1 1.3 M 2012 0.000
MBLAQ J-TUNE Camp 51,087 1.1 1 1.1 M 2009 0.000
Shin Hyesung Liveworks 24,102 0.5 1 0.5 M 2005 0.000
Sum 4,649,376 100.0 31 0.1361
Average 2.6
Note: Due to the limitation of space, shorter names for firms are used (e.g. SM Entertainment,
YG Entertainment, JYP Entertainment are shortened as SM , YG, and JYP).

Table 5A-2. Concentration of monthly CD #10 hits, by K-pop bands

33
 No. of Titles Band HHI
Bands Firms Hits Share Sex
Titles shares birth (5bis)
Super Junior SM 937,298 13.61 10 3.7 M 2005 0.019
Girl's Generation SM 679,500 9.87 7 2.6 F 2007 0.010
Big Bang YG 640,410 9.30 9 3.3 M 2006 0.009
TVXQ SM 637,708 9.26 8 3.0 M 2003 0.009
Infinite Woollim 363,717 5.28 9 3.3 M 2010 0.003
SHINee SM 358,108 5.20 5 1.9 M 2008 0.003
CNBLUE FNC Music 348,709 5.07 8 3.0 M 2010 0.003
JYJ C-JeS 303,048 4.40 4 1.5 M 2010 0.002
Beast Cube 260,459 3.78 6 2.2 M 2009 0.001
T-ara Core Contents 225,536 3.28 11 4.1 F 2007 0.001
G-Dragon YG 212,361 3.08 5 1.9 M 2009 0.001
Kim Hyun Joong Key east 209,370 3.04 3 1.1 M 2011 0.001
KIM JaeJoong C-JeS 202,795 2.95 3 1.1 M 2013 0.001
Teen Top TOP Media 184,406 2.68 6 2.2 M 2010 0.001
Kara DSP Media 183,071 2.66 4 1.5 F 2007 0.001
XIA C-JeS 177,000 2.57 2 0.7 M 2012 0.001
F.T Island FNC Music 167,915 2.44 5 1.9 M 2007 0.001
B1A4 WM 163,477 2.37 6 2.2 M 2011 0.001
MBLAQ Jtune Camp 149,885 2.18 7 2.6 M 2009 0.000
IU Loen 144,663 2.10 6 2.2 F 2008 0.000
︙ ︙ ︙ ︙ ︙ ︙ ︙ ︙ ︙
4Men 7,224 0.10 1 0.4 0.000
Kim Taewoo 7,098 0.10 1 0.4 0.000
Sum 6,884,495 100 270 0.0715
Average 0.011
Note: Due to the limitation of space, sample of 66 artists between IU and 4Men, and
compilation CD albums by various artists are omitted even if they are included in the data
analysis, and shorter names for firms are used (e.g. SM Entertainment, YG Entertainment, JYP
Entertainment are shortened as SM , YG, and JYP).

Table 5A-3. Concentration of monthly Downloads #10 hits, by K-pop bands

No. of Titles Band HHI
Bands Firms Hits Share Sex
Titles shares birth (5bis)
T-ara Core Contents 10,878,973 11.22 3 0.10 F 2009 0.0126
Sistar Starship 9,554,942 9.86 3 0.10 F 2010 0.0097
Bing Bang YG 6,705,146 6.92 2 0.07 M 2006 0.0048
miss A JYP 6,594,605 6.80 2 0.07 F 2010 0.0046
Girl's Generation SM 6,349,547 6.55 2 0.07 F 2007 0.0043
Psy YG 3,842,109 3.96 1 0.03 M 2001 0.0016

34
 GG iMBC 3,625,939 3.74 1 0.03 M/F 2011 0.0014
2NE1 YG 3,467,674 3.58 1 0.03 F 2009 0.0013
Busker Busker CJ E&M 3,399,202 3.51 1 0.03 M 2011 0.0012
2AM JYP 3,352,827 3.46 1 0.03 M 2009 0.0012
Davichi Core Contents 3,285,936 3.39 1 0.03 F 2008 0.0011
Ailee YMC 3,227,917 3.33 1 0.03 F 2012 0.0011
Heo Gak A Cube 3,101,481 3.20 1 0.03 M 2011 0.0010
YWHO
4Men 3,093,483 3.19 1 0.03 M 2013 0.0010
Enterprise
Leessang Jungle 3,081,880 3.18 1 0.03 M 2002 0.0010
Sagging Snail iMBC 3,081,488 3.18 1 0.03 M 2011 0.0010
Lyn Pan 3,025,492 3.12 1 0.03 F 2001 0.0010
IU LOEN 3,008,795 3.10 1 0.03 F 2008 0.0010
KARA DSP Media 2,977,898 3.07 1 0.03 F 2007 0.0009
CNBLUE FNC Music 2,959,800 3.05 1 0.03 M 2010 0.0009
10cm Nega Network 2,830,335 2.92 1 0.03 M 2010 0.0009
Wonder Girls JYP 2,790,298 2.88 1 0.03 F 2007 0.0008
MC Mong CJ E&M 2,698,185 2.78 1 0.03 M 1998 0.0008
0.0553
Sum 96,933,952 100 30

Average 0.043
Note: Due to the limitation of space, shorter names for firms are used (e.g. SM Entertainment,
YG Entertainment, JYP Entertainment are shortened as SM , YG, and JYP).

Table 5A-4. Concentration of monthly Streaming #10 hits, by K-pop bands

No. of Titles Band HHI
Bands Firms Hits Share Sex
Titles shares birth (5bis)
0.006
Sistar Starship 71,986,535 8.07 2 0.07 F 2010
5
0.005
IU LOEN 64,994,879 7.29 2 0.07 F 2008
3
0.005
Busker Busker CJ E&M 63,515,226 7.12 2 0.07 M 2011
1
0.003
T-ara Core Contents 55,831,892 6.26 2 0.07 F 2009
9
0.003
2NE1 YG 53,872,780 6.04 2 0.07 F 2009
6
0.003
Big Bang YG 53,237,548 5.97 2 0.07 M 2006
6
0.002
Psy YG 43,032,180 4.83 1 0.03 M 2001
3
0.001
miss A JYP 37,315,823 4.18 1 0.03 F 2010
8
0.001
2AM JYP 34,166,742 3.83 1 0.03 M 2009
5

35
 0.001
Girl's Generation SM 33,038,894 3.70 1 0.03 F 2007
4
0.001
4Men YWHO 30,279,518 3.40 1 0.03 M 2013
2
0.001
MC mong CJ E&M 29,818,457 3.34 1 0.03 M 1998
1
Seo in guk& Jellyfish & 0.001
29,486,793 3.31 1 0.03 M/F 2012
Jeong eun jee A Cube 1
0.001
KARA DSP Media 28,603,338 3.21 1 0.03 F 2007
0
0.001
Wonder Girls JYP 28,504,554 3.20 1 0.03 F 2007
0
0.001
CNBLUE F&C Music 27,564,498 3.09 1 0.03 M 2010
0
0.000
Ailee YMC 27,059,904 3.03 1 0.03 F 2012
9
0.000
Park Bom YG 26,999,841 3.03 1 0.03 F 2011
9
0.000
Kim Bumsoo iMBC 26,960,351 3.02 1 0.03 M 1999
9
0.000
Girl`s Day Dream Tea 26,022,780 2.92 1 0.03 F 2010
9
0.000
f(x) SM 25,846,718 2.90 1 0.03 F 2009
8
0.000
Secret TS 25,168,101 2.82 1 0.03 F 2009
8
0.000
G.NA Cube 25,070,108 2.81 1 0.03 F 2010
8
0.000
Beast Cube 23,362,586 2.62 1 0.03 M 2009
7
0.048
Sum 891,740,046 100 30
0
Average 0.042
Note: Due to the limitation of space, shorter names for firms are used (e.g. SM Entertainment,
YG Entertainment, JYP Entertainment are shortened as SM , YG, and JYP).

Table 5A-5. Concentration of monthly YouTube #10 hits, by K-pop bands

No. of Titles Band HHI
Bands Firms Hits Share Sex
Titles shares birth (5bis)
Psy YG 1,112,096,230 62.12 3 0.15 M 2001 0.3859
Big Bang YG 172,490,821 9.63 5 0.25 M 2006 0.0093
2NE1 YG 121,337,345 6.78 1 0.05 F 2009 0.0046
Girls' Generation SM 72,364,924 4.04 1 0.05 F 2007 0.0016
Super Junior SM 62,211,500 3.47 2 0.10 M 2005 0.0012
Hyuna Cube 53,396,569 2.98 1 0.05 F 2010 0.0009
KARA DSP 43,248,376 2.42 1 0.05 F 2001 0.0006

36
 f(x) SM 36,200,745 2.02 2 0.10 F 2009 0.0004
Taetiseo SM 31,939,213 1.78 1 0.05 F 2012 0.0003
Hyuna
Cube 30,508,913 1.70 1 0.05 F/M 2011 0.0003
& Hyunseung
SISTAR Starship 28,986,016 1.62 1 0.05 F 2010 0.0003
Wonder Girls JYP 25,508,492 1.42 1 0.05 F 2007 0.0002

Sum 1,790,289,144 100 20 0.4055

Average 0.083
Note: Due to the limitation of space, shorter names for firms are used (e.g. SM Entertainment,
YG Entertainment, JYP Entertainment are shortened as SM , YG, and JYP).

37
Concentration from the K-firms (upstream contributors) perspective

Table 5B-1. Concentration of monthly CD #1 hits, by K-firms

No. of Titles No. of Average Share Titles
Firms Hits Share
Titles shares bands per band 5 HHI 6 HHI
SM 2,887,639 62.1 15 4.1 6 10.4 0.3857 0.2341
YG 994,117 21.4 8 2.7 2 10.7 0.0457 0.0666
C-JeS 230,718 5.0 2 2.5 1 5.0 0.0025 0.0042
RAIN 208,322 4.5 1 4.5 1 4.5 0.0020 0.0010
Key East 100,433 2.2 1 2.2 1 2.2 0.0005 0.0010
CUBE 90,000 1.9 1 1.9 1 1.9 0.0004 0.0010
Woollim 62,958 1.4 1 1.4 1 1.4 0.0002 0.0010
JTUNE 51,087 1.1 1 1.1 1 1.1 0.0001 0.0010
Shinhwa 24,102 0.5 1 0.5 1 0.5 0.0000 0.0010
Sum 4,649,376 100.0 31 15 6.7 0.4371 0.3111
Average 2.3
Note: Due to the limitation of space, shorter names for firms are used (e.g. SM Entertainment,
YG Entertainment, JYP Entertainment are shortened as SM, YG, and JYP).

Table 5B-2. Concentration of monthly CD #10 hits, by K-firms

No. of Titles No. of Average Share Titles
Firms Hits Share
Titles shares bands per band 5 HHI 6 HHI
SM 3,196,364 33.2 45 0.74 9 3.69 0.1102 0.0278
YG 1,202,843 12.5 27 0.46 9 1.39 0.0156 0.0100
C-JES 682,843 7.1 9 0.79 3 2.36 0.0050 0.0011
FNC Music 516,624 5.4 13 0.41 2 2.68 0.0029 0.0023
Woollim 466,691 4.8 13 0.37 3 1.62 0.0023 0.0023
Cube 410,035 4.3 11 0.39 4 1.06 0.0018 0.0017
JYP 321,963 3.3 12 0.28 6 0.56 0.0011 0.0020
Core Contents 225,536 2.3 11 0.21 1 2.34 0.0005 0.0017
Key East 209,370 2.2 3 0.72 1 2.17 0.0005 0.0001
DSP 196,372 2.0 5 0.41 2 1.02 0.0004 0.0003
T.O.P 184,406 1.9 6 0.32 1 1.92 0.0004 0.0005
LOEN 182,565 1.9 9 0.21 4 0.47 0.0004 0.0011
TS 173,625 1.8 10 0.18 2 0.90 0.0003 0.0014
WM 163,477 1.7 6 0.28 1 1.70 0.0003 0.0005
J.Tune Camp 149,885 1.6 7 0.22 1 1.56 0.0002 0.0007
Starship 133,007 1.4 8 0.17 3 0.46 0.0002 0.0009
CJ E&M 129,005 1.3 4 0.33 1 1.34 0.0002 0.0002
Hook 76,308 0.8 3 0.26 1 0.79 0.0001 0.0001
Sidus HQ 73,841 0.8 1 0.77 1 0.77 0.0001 0.0000

38
 Stardom 58,001 0.6 4 0.15 1 0.60 0.0000 0.0002
︙ ︙ ︙ ︙ ︙ ︙ ︙ ︙ ︙
Why Who 7224 0.1 1 0.08 1 0.08 0.0000 0.0000
Soul Shop 7098 0.1 1 0.07 1 0.07 0.0000 0.0000
Sum 9,628,828 100 270 82 0.1439 0.0639
Average 0.244
Note: Due to the limitation of space, sample of 24 firms between IU and 4Men, and compilation
CD albums by various artists (thus, by various firms) are omitted even if they are included in
the data analysis. Shorter names for firms are used (e.g. SM Entertainment, YG Entertainment,
JYP Entertainment are shortened as SM , YG, and JYP).

Table 5B-3. Concentration of monthly Downloads #10 hits, by K-firms

No. of Titles No. of Average Share Titles
Firms Hits Share bands per band
Titles shares 5 HHI 6 HHI
YG 14,014,929 14.5 4 3.61 2 7.23 0.0209 0.0178
JYP 12,737,730 13.1 4 3.29 2 6.57 0.0173 0.0178
Core Contents 10,087,024 10.4 3 3.47 1 10.41 0.0108 0.0100
Starship 9,554,942 9.9 3 3.29 1 9.86 0.0097 0.0100
LOEN 7,086,680 7.3 2 3.66 1 7.31 0.0053 0.0044
iMBC 6,707,427 6.9 2 3.46 2 3.46 0.0048 0.0044
SM 6,349,547 6.6 2 3.28 1 6.55 0.0043 0.0044
CJ E&M 6,097,387 6.3 2 3.15 2 3.15 0.0040 0.0044
YMC 3,227,917 3.3 1 3.33 1 3.33 0.0011 0.0011
A Cube 3,101,481 3.2 1 3.20 1 3.20 0.0010 0.0011
YWHO 3,093,483 3.2 1 3.19 1 3.19 0.0010 0.0011
Jungle 3,081,880 3.2 1 3.18 1 3.18 0.0010 0.0011
Pan 3,025,492 3.1 1 3.12 1 3.12 0.0010 0.0011
DSP Media 2,977,898 3.1 1 3.07 1 3.07 0.0009 0.0011
F&C Music 2,959,800 3.1 1 3.05 1 3.05 0.0009 0.0011
Nega Network 2,830,335 2.9 1 2.92 1 2.92 0.0009 0.0011
Sum 96,933,952 100 30 20 0.0850 0.0822
Average 3.27
Note: Due to the limitation of space, shorter names for firms are used (e.g. SM Entertainment,
YG Entertainment, JYP Entertainment are shortened as SM, YG, and JYP).

Table 5B-4. Concentration of monthly Streaming #10 hits, by K-firms

No. of Titles No. of Average Share Titles
Firms Hits Share
Titles shares bands per band 5 HHI 6 HHI
YG 177,142,349 19.9 6 3.31 4 4.97 0.0395 0.0400
JYP 99,987,119 11.2 3 3.74 3 3.74 0.0126 0.0100
CJ E&M 93,333,683 10.5 3 3.49 2 5.23 0.0110 0.0100

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Starship 71,986,535 8.1 2 4.04 1 8.07 0.0065 0.0044
LOEN 64,994,879 7.3 2 3.64 1 7.29 0.0053 0.0044
SM 58,885,612 6.6 2 3.30 2 3.30 0.0044 0.0044
Core Contents 55,831,892 6.3 2 3.13 1 6.26 0.0039 0.0044
Cube 48,432,694 5.4 2 2.72 2 2.72 0.0029 0.0044
YWHO 30,279,518 3.4 1 3.40 1 3.40 0.0012 0.0011
Jellyfish & A Cube 29,486,793 3.3 1 3.31 1 3.31 0.0011 0.0011
DSP Media 28,603,338 3.2 1 3.21 1 3.21 0.0010 0.0011
F&C Music 27,564,498 3.1 1 3.09 1 3.09 0.0010 0.0011
YMC 27,059,904 3.0 1 3.03 1 3.03 0.0009 0.0011
iMBC 26,960,351 3.0 1 3.02 1 3.02 0.0009 0.0011
Dream Tea 26,022,780 2.9 1 2.92 1 2.92 0.0009 0.0011
TS 25,168,101 2.8 1 2.82 1 2.82 0.0008 0.0011
Sum 891,740,046 100 30 24 0.0938 0.0911
Average 3.26
Note: Due to the limitation of space, shorter names for firms are used (e.g. SM Entertainment,
YG Entertainment, JYP Entertainment are shortened as SM, YG, and JYP).

Table 5B-5. Concentration of monthly YouTube #10 hits, by K-firms

No. of Titles No. of Average Share Titles
Firms Hits Share
Titles shares bands per band 5 HHI 6 HHI
YG 1,405,924,396 78.5 10 7.85 3 26.18 0.6167 1.0000
SM 202,716,382 11.3 4 2.83 4 2.83 0.0128 0.1600
Cube 83,905,482 4.7 3 1.56 2 2.34 0.0022 0.0900
DSP 43,248,376 2.4 1 2.42 1 2.42 0.0006 0.0100
Starship 28,986,016 1.6 1 1.62 1 1.62 0.0003 0.0100
JYP 25,508,492 1.4 1 1.42 1 1.42 0.0002 0.0100
Sum 1,790,289,144 100 2 2.95 12 0.6328 0.3200
Average 3.26
Note: Due to the limitation of space, shorter names for firms are used (e.g. SM Entertainment,
YG Entertainment, JYP Entertainment are shortened as SM, YG, and JYP).

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ANNEX 3. Detailed data and description for Table 6

Differences between Korean prices and prices in the rest of the world for song (i.e the
price for MP3 downloading)
Unit Price of Song Exchange Remarks
Country
Korean Won: KRW Original Currency Rate (Source)

GBP 1
U.K ₩1,339 ~ 1,678 GBP 0.79 ~ 0.99 Source: www.officialchart.com
= 1,695 Won
AUD 1
Australia ₩1,843 AUD 1.69 Source : www.ariachart.com
= 1,091 Won
Source: www.fr.7digital.com,
France ₩ 2,138 EUR 1.49 EUR 1 www.Amazon.fr
= 1,435 Won
Germany ₩ 1,421 EUR 0.99 Source: www.Amazon.de
USD 1
U.S ₩ 991 ~ 1,436 USD 0.89~ 1.29 Source: www.Amazon.com
= 1,114 Won
Canada ₩ 1,552 CND 1.43 CND 1 Amazon Canada does not
= 1,085 Won provide price of song as MP3, but
only of Album price.
Note: unit price calculated based
on price of CD at retail (eg.
HMV: CND 20.08/14 songs)
JPY 1 Sale price set by domestic
Japan ₩ 2,718 JPY 250 distributors (eg. Mora, Dwango,
= 10.87 Won
Oricon ME, and etc)
Sold as a package (100 or 150
songs) designed by domestic
₩ 105 Case A
service providers (eg. Melon,
-- Soribada and M-net)
For songs in newly released
Korea ₩ 600 Case B album (the Hold-back system**
applies)
Case C USD 1 Price of MP3 downloading at
₩ 1,102 ~ 1,436 Amazon
(USD 0.99~1.29) = 1,114 Won
Source: www.Amazon.com
In practice, downloading song is
free. However, single unit of
₩ 182 CNY 1 song can be sold at this rate when
consumer wants song with a high
CNY 1
China quality sound.
= 181.6
Sold as a monthly package for
₩ 1,816 CNY 10 unlimited number of downloads
(eg. QQ, Baidu, and etc)

Source: Authors based on MP3 sale-price of one song on the Amazon, iTune and various sources from
the domestic internet service providers.
Note: For comparison, exchange rate (April 2013: 1$ = ₩ 1,113.5) is applied to transform original
currency into Korean won.
* The practice of free downloading for MP3 file through the shared websites prevails over most
developing countries. iTune controls the price of songs through the locational access where you are
connected to. For example, country’s software of iTune becomes invalid when using it through the
access of other countries’ internet connection.

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