Corporation Pop

In 2012, South Korean rapper and singer-songwriter PSY released a K-pop track called “Gangnam Style.” A month after its release, the song was viral — it peaked at number two on the US’s Billboard Hot 100 and topped charts in 30 other countries around the world, while the accompanying music video snagged Best Video at the MTV Europe Music Awards and became the first YouTube video to clock one billion views, subsequently maintaining its record as the most viewed YouTube video for the next five years. And 14 years later, PSY was still breaking records: in July 2026, “Gangnam Style” became the first K-pop video to hit six billion views on YouTube.

Though K-pop has been around since the 1990s, PSY’s hit single paved the way for a new era in Korean music — one of global influence, backed by an industry that rakes in about a billion dollars per year off the backs of “idols” recruited at as young as ten years of age. The training process is brutal: would-be celebrities spend years signed to exploitative contracts in agency-owned boot camps, honing their song and dance skills as well as undergoing dangerous diets and invasive plastic surgeries meant to sculpt the perfect stars.

The debut of globally popular groups like BTS, Blackpink, Seventeen, Twice, and Stray Kids has made South Korea one of the top music-exporting countries in the world, with exports reaching a high of $301.7 million in 2025 and sales on track to exceed that figure this year; exports were already up 125% in the first half of 2026, with the Korean pop music industry reporting a whopping $257.5 million in global sales. Today South Korea is exceeded in exports only by the United States and the UK, indicating a profound reorientation of a music industry long dominated by the West.

A larger “Korean wave,” or hallyu, has also brought K-dramas, K-beauty, and Korean food to a global audience, influencing culture and consumption across Asia and beyond. Through K-pop and these other cultural exports, South Korea ably launders the darker sides of its image, from the growing domestic dominance of chaebol families to the country’s enduring military entanglement with the United States. The rise of South Korean influence has certainly been a blow to Western cultural hegemony — but has perhaps ushered in a different form of cultural imperialism.