the kpop edition

[acchikocchi]

1. So give me the lowdown on SM Entertainment as a corporation. How do they recruit/train/market/etc., especially in comparison to JE? Info on shady business practices and lawsuits and things of that sort also welcome. XD ...How does the Korean music industry and market compare to the Japanese in general, actually? There is no such thing as tldr in comments here.

2. Favorite Korean artists/songs/albums/music videos? I am woefully ignorant. Pop, not pop, what have you - hit me. (Assume I know basically no one except Park Ji-yoon, since that's... true. Oh, and BoA.)

Comments

[acchikocchi.livejournal.com]

One would be sadism/masochism

In what sense? That is, in Japanese culture you have the terms S and M thrown around all the time - to label personality types or at least image types (in terms of interactions on camera) especially - but somehow I don't think that's what you're getting at? *g*

Re: chaebol: I only had the vaguest notion of how the chaebol system worked before, but even a quick Wiki-ing is enlightening. Fascinating to read, and the comparison to the keiretsu system is especially helpful to me since again, that's just what I'm more familiar with. Chaebol seem more akin in several ways to zaibatsu, though, which is in line with their respective timelines. So take the big talent agencies - SM, YG, etc. - do you mean they're part of a larger group, or are they at the top of the tier controlling everyone else? Just how transparent is all this, anyway? (I'm doing my best to poke around online instead of just inundating you with questions, sorry!) If you have any articles and write-ups you'd rather point me at than answer my every question, that's more than fine. :)

Incidentally, this is all exactly - exactly - what I'm trying to get a finger on. That's what still fascinates me about Johnny's, too - placing the faces and personalities and nutty concerts we know and love in the context of the massive looming shadow behind them, ahaha.

Ah, I totally did think SM stood for Soo Man when I first found out his name, whoops. *g* So I take it that these groups don't outsource their composing overseas as much? (You are completely on the money about the Johnny's sound. Did you catch the interview in the Japan Times with one of the major songwriters for JE, by the way? The two Swedish songwriters in that one documentary write a lot for NEWS, the quartet behind Shuuji to Akira was Swedish - but this guy's songs go mainly to KAT-TUN and he's an American from NY/LA. I should take a look at, say, Kanjani8's songwriting credits sometime. They're probably actually Japanese.)

Because *of course* they can't count to 5, or else as a group they're finished.

eep, you lost me here, sorry! *dies* Why 5...?

Also, does this mean you're officially crossing over (though not abandoning Johnny's, of course)?

I danced around this in the post itself but have no qualms admitting it in comments. Yup, they've got me at last. XD Not that I didn't appreciate individual songs or artists (okay, namely the two mentioned in the post) before this, but I wasn't at all interested in anyone as people, or the overall scope of things. And I was so convinced that I'd never look at it from a fannish perspective because I was too chicken to leave my (Japanese) linguistic-and-cultural-understanding bubble! How are the mighty fallen. XD *regrets nothing*

As far as Johnny's goes, I'm keeping an eye on them still (and I'm signed up for the annual fit of masochism end of the year fic exchange as well, haha, so I'd better not be bailing out any time soon), but I've been restless and ready for fresh meat for a while now. So to speak. For the last few months I've been revisiting old fandoms and checking out what's been going on there since whenever I was last around, but I was basically ripe for the picking. *g*

[brustreet.livejournal.com]

Re: S&M, it's something that especially comes out in Korean cinema. It's more than just torture -- it's something about reveling in the experience of it, the terror of the sublime, accessing that through the pain that accompanies a kind of martyrdom. Practically every serious Korean film features some scene, some variant, on this luxuriating in agony. Park Chan Wook's films especially (jesus, the toothpulling scene in Old Boy makes my fingers curl into claws), but Secret Sunshine, Oasis, any Korean horror films -- it's stunning how prevalent it is. I used to think it was a big metaphor for Korea's post-colonial relationship to martyrdom and to Japan, but I think it runs deeper than that.

That fetish carries over into Korean pop music especially with drama MVs. Like the ending of these linked MVs (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_8w1QgorDw), or this MV (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zL08L96wxyE), or this MV where he basically gets shot in the head (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOKl1jhR5NA). And so on.

Re: the chaebols, the agencies are definitely not at the top. In fact, I'd hazard a guess that all of them operate eternally in the red, with maybe the exception of JYP. It costs so much money to buy songs, to stage them, to film MVs, to do PR, to (ahem) grease palms. One of the most interesting things that came out of TVXQ's lawsuit was SME's assertion that they'd actually lost money in the time since TVXQ debuted (the false implication being it was the group's fault). You have to join the comm, but someone also posted a financial report on SME (http://community.livejournal.com/dbsg/3934520.html#cutid1) back when the lawsuit mess started.

How the agencies are connected is hard to straighten out, but here's an example: Shinhwa was one of SME's first and most popular boybands, but after some wank, they jumped ship in 2003 to Good Entertainment, an agency that (miracle of miracles!) was also founded in 2003 by CJ Entertainment, one of the most powerful entertainment conglomerates in Korea. CJ Entertainment, btw, owns properties such as M.Net (a channel with some bad blood between it and YGE). Good Entertainment is also connected to JYP -- when one of the original members quit Wonder Girls, GE sent over Yoobin to JYP. Incidentally, that member who quit WG is now the leader of her own Cube Entertainment group, 4 Minute. Cube Entertainment is a sister company of JYPE, much like M-Boat (which used to have Wheesung and Big Mama) was a sister company of YGE. And everywhere in between is CJ Entertainment and the massive clout they have in Korea, especially taking into consideration their film companies and ownership of CGV.

Re: outsourcing, it's complex. The big three have their founding producers (Lee Soo Man, YG, JYP). As SME and YGE send more and more feelers out internationally, they've started buying the rights to more and more songs written by non-Koreans (as opposed to, ahem, borrowing without asking). An astonishing number of the songs from SHINee's first album were essentially remakes. I think that's just economics -- cheaper to buy the rights to a song for a certain country/language than to buy them all together (which is what SME did for SNSD's Genie). But that's not necessarily the case for JYP, likely because he actually is sort of an international producer, having worked with Will Smith and Cassie and the like. He's also the only Big 3 producer who speaks fluent English. For SME this is all a source of potential identity-loss danger; they're known for those LSM/Yoo Young Jin collaborations (collectively known as SMP), from the days of H.O.T up through Super Junior. They seem to be handling it with aplomb; "SORRY, SORRY" is, after all, a thoroughly updated SMP song from YYJ.

"5" because the group is called 4 Minute. :)

Well, tons of Kpop idols head over to Korea, so there'll be lots of source material you don't need translations for? And welcome to Kpop; it's insane and so is a lot of its fandom, but it's still a lot of fun.

[brustreet.livejournal.com]

Ah, something else -- kpop news is hard to get without a side helping of bullshit. You probably already know these sites:

+ AllKpop.com (http://www.allkpop.com/) is one of the most popular news/gossip/opinion sites, and it's populated with cavemen, cretins, misogynists and idiots. Still, they have a close relationship with MTV Iggy, so it's one of the best places to find out about Kpop related stuff going on Stateside.

+ Seoulbeats (http://www.seoulbeats.com/) is a faux-gressive kpop news site; they pretend to be the PC version of AllKpop, but they're pretty much as shallow, narrowminded and transphobic as the writers over at AK. It's unfortunate, considering how much genderbending and androgyny there is in Kpop right now, and really, you'd think David Bowie and his ilk never happened or something, given how often they pull out the fainting couch for any girls acting too boyish or boys acting too femme. Still, they're probably #1 and #2 for kpop news and opinions.

+ You'll see 2OD get mentioned if you're into 2PM/2AM. It's referring to the forums (http://www.2oneday.com/) here, as well as its infamous twitter here (http://twitter.com/Twooneday).

+ I really prefer Angry Asian Man (http://www.angryasianman.com/angry.html) for pop culture news, but he almost never covers Kpop except when it goes to the U.S. a la BoA. Too bad, because he seems like such a decent, intelligent and thoughtful guy.

+ Korea Pop Wars (http://www.koreapopwars.com/) is a great resource for all things business-related to Kpop.

+ Korea Gig Guide (http://www.koreagigguide.com/) is a great website for following Korean indie music, if you ever want to dip your toes into the rock side of things.

[acchikocchi.livejournal.com]

Oh, beautiful hard numbers, they make my heart go pitter-patter. (Whatever part of my character is to blame, I always seem to want Proof and Date and Evidence. Also, I was raised by an economist. *g*) I was just wondering in a different thread how much outlay these ventures into the Japanese market in particular required - especially in a case like DBSK where sheer persistence seems to be an essential element - but I had no idea that operating in the red was standard procedure. (But why not, if you have other companies to cover your losses?)

And I see CJ Entertainment belongs to CJ Corporation, which was spun off of Samsung and keeps "very close ties to this day". I just bet. Wow, this is the sort of thing that is endlessly fascinating to me. *dies* Must research further. All we're missing is a little organized crime.

I was thinking of mentioning a couple of the especially helpful threads here another post - do you mind if I include this one or would you rather not have it singled out? Totally understand if that's the case. :)

Oh, and thank you for the links below, especially the business and indie links! :D

[brustreet.livejournal.com]

Let me look around my memories a bit -- I usually save anything with, as you say, hard numbers because hearsay is so prevalent in fandom. And nothing wrong with wanting empirical proof; I wish more fans would be that exacting. :)

Well, speaking organized of organized crime... (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jang_Ja-yeon) I really, really wouldn't be surprised if most of these agencies ended up having ties to crime orgs. Not that we need the extra layer of sleaze -- in a strange way, the agencies themselves form their own kind of underworld. And we still don't know what happened with Kim Sung-hoon, the man referenced in Jang Ja Yeon's wiki entry.

I'd actually prefer not to have attention called, but if you wanted to quote part of our discussion without attribution, that'd be fine with me. :)

[acchikocchi.livejournal.com]

.....oh geez, I remember hearing in passing about her death last spring, but I didn't remember (or never knew) that it was suicide, and I definitely never heard about the note. That's... really awful. Gah.

That works perfectly well, too, thanks. :D