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K-pop labels embrace diversity, taking on non-Korean talent and forming international groups to win global fans
- Major Korean labels are looking to increase K-pop’s 2 per cent share of global music sales and are creating non-Korean groups to appeal to a wider audience
- JYP Entertainment’s American girl group VCHA debuts this month, while SM Entertainment plans to launch a British boy group
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Why you can trust SCMP
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By Dong Sun-hwa
What is K-pop? Given that the letter “K-” refers to “Korean”, people used to think that a song fell into the category of K-pop if it was mostly sung in Korean by singers who were trained and incubated by music labels based in Seoul.
Although K-pop has seen various nationalities of singers since its birth in the late 1990s, most foreign members were from China and Japan – like the former Super Junior member Han Geng – and their numbers were limited.
But this is a thing of the past now. K-pop management companies these days are eyeing the international market by recruiting more foreign talent, believing they can appeal to the people of their own countries by closely interacting with them.
One of the most noteworthy cases is the girl group Blackswan, which is made up of Senegalese-Belgian Fatou, Brazilian-German Gabi, American NVee and Indian Sriya. It had Korean members when it debuted in 2020, but they all ended up leaving.
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