Seo Taiji started his career back in the 1990’s after dropping out of High School.  He is often known as the “President of culture” after first introducing a mixture of elements to the United States. Although Taiji now works solo, at the age of 40 he often still performs with other musicians.

K-pop has been successful in many countries already, including Japan, Vietnam, China, Taiwan, Thailand the USA and Sweden. S.M Entertainments biggest artist BoA has sold over 24 million albums so far, and she has also toured in the US. The beauty of acts such as BoA and Girls Generation (a 9 piece electropop group) is that they learn Japanese before they go there and often release a Japanese version of their singles. They put a lot of dedication in and this pays off as they have managed to break the Japanese market. Another successful act is Rain (Jeong Ji Hoon) who has been compared to Justin Timberlake. He is a singer and also acts and dances and is extremely well known in Asian countries. In Time Magazine, back in 2006 he was named as one of the 100 Most Influential People.

K-pop seems to produce a sense of comrade-ship and a great bond particularly amongst its young fans (average age between 15 and 20 years old). It has even been described as a religion! The groups have been credited for genuinely caring about their fans in a way that Westernized bands don’t seem on a par with. It is entertaining with good looking young men and women that can sing and dance professionally. It is a kind of sanctuary for its fans and its originality makes music fun and interesting.

As with other types of popular music, there is a variety of K-pop merchandise available, mostly over the internet. This merchandise ranges from musical memorabilia to K-pop motorbikes. If you really get hooked on buying major K-pop products to the scale of a motorbike you might want to think about  the different options of funding this, which may involve checking out balance transfer offers or comparing the bank’s latest promotions with regards to loans and overdrafts. The availability of K-pop products in the UK is growing along with the popularity of K-pop.

K- pop is so popular in South Korea that they have their own reality show called ‘Survival Audition K-pop star’. The first auditions have taken place and were held in the US, Brazil, China and Europe. These were followed by the next three stages. The ultimate final winner is to be crowned after a live competition held between March 4 and April 29^th 2012. The judges that are hoping to put the finalists on the road to stardom are Yang Hyun-suk, founder of YG Entertainment and former member of Seo Taiji & Boys, Park Jin-young, who is also singer/songwriter of JYP Entertainment and BoA (famous female singer from SM Entertainment). The winner is to debut with a cash prize of three hundred million won (approximately £150,000) with the runner- up prize consisting of two vehicles. This will serve to seal the popularity of K-pop in South Korea. 

Facebook and Twitter have increased the popularity of K-pop in the UK with fans of K-pop using it to their advantage by being the first to find out about forthcoming events.   In fact it is becoming so popular in the UK that there is no need to advertise. Proof of its increasing popularity in the UK was at the Mayor’s Thames Festival last September when over 100,000 teenagers watched music videos together and participated in K-pop related competitions. The appeal to Westerners is the combination of the dynamic confidence of the bands along with the melodic songs that are easy to sing along to. Although it is just in its infancy in the UK, there is always room for great musical talent