The Dummy Guide to K-POP

An indepth guide to boy and girl bands behind the radical digital artform that could rescue the world’s pop music.

Slowly but surely, K-pop is opening up to western audiences. A sound built for Korean teenagers is now gaining attention from audiences of all ages and musical backgrounds, with Dummy favourite Grimes releasing the K-pop influenced track Phone Sex and Kanye West, Snoop Dogg and Will.i.am all reportedly lining up to work with K-pop artists such as 2NE1. It is also one of the most radical and popular digital artforms in the world.

Initially music created for an Asian demographic, K-pop, or Korean pop, is a wild hybrid of electronic, R&B, hip hop and trance. It’s pop music in its most potent state and, with its ultra-polished appearance and hyper-catchy melodies, it requires you to take everything you see and hear with a pinch of salt. But that’s part of the fun.

Maybe you’ve heard of the groups Super Junior, Teen Top, SHINee or 2NE1. You not have known that they are a part of a music industry that garnered over an estimated 200 million YouTube views last year. The manifestation of K-pop will be fascinating to watch over the next coming months and years. As many, from Monocle to In These Times have reported, K-pop is significantly tied to Korean politics and “soft power”.

The image the east Asian country presents is shifting from a corporate one with their electronics and car industry to, through its music and pop culture, one of an attractive, fascinating, glistening, and sometimes immaculate world, full of creativity beyond electronics. Korea is a country geographically very distant but increasingly approachable globally. As a result K-pop has been one gateway of completely educating and widening ones perspective of a country that in the past may have felt unfamiliar. Here is what you need to know about fascinating artform.

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