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

[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