By an anonymous writer
Super Junior. T-ara. Girl’s Generation. 2NE1. Big Bang. After School. These are some of the most sensational brands that define Korean pop culture today. Everything from their lyrics to their dance, from their attires to figure of speech, ripples through adolescent minds and shapes the continuously changing trends among teens in Korea. Hence, they are called ‘idol groups’; they are idolized by teenagers.
I like to believe that artists strive to express a broad array of human emotions in a variety of creative ways. Entertainment firms, which have a habit of enslaving their young employees, seem to be more interested in producing content to indoctrinate adolescents with commercial messages rather than inspiring their thoughts and enriching their emotions. Their ammunition is meaningless but highly catchy lyrics, repeated excessively, and embedded in computer-processed electronic sounds—like Super Junior’s 2009 hit that repeated the inane lyrics “Ring Ding Dong” over and over ad nauseum.
After giving some thought to it, I came to the conclusion that the changes in trends derive from changes in the profit model of the music industry. There has been a significant change in the consumer-producer relationship in this industry due to the introduction of mp3 technology and P2P programs. Idol groups have been forced to change their source of income from selling music to selling themselves as appealing instruments of corporate propaganda.
We are no longer the customers of the entertainment firms whose stars we admire and even idolize. Their clients are elsewhere, probably in big offices somewhere along the skylines. The clients of the entertainment firms are corporations. So, whenever T-ara repeats the title of their hit “Bo Peep,” it is seen as a potential advertisement tool. In fact, Yuhan-Kimberly, a leading firm in the sanitations products industry, rewarded Core Contents Media, the firm in charge of managing T-ara, with a truck-load of “Poppee” box tissues because Yuhan-Kimberly’s sales increased due to T-ara’s hit title. Or what about Girl’s Generation and their “kicking-the-shuttlecock” dance endorsed as a part of Shinhan Card’s TV advertisement? 2NE1’s debut title “Lollipop”, sung in partnership with male idol group, Big Bang, was intentionally composed to take part in LG Electronics’ marketing strategy in launching one of its latest mobile phone models, Lollipop. Samsung Electronics followed suit shortly after when they endorsed Son Dam Bi and After School in producing the song “AMOLED” in which they sing how beautiful everything looks with Samsung’s latest mobile phone display technology, AMOLED.
The worse part of this phenomenon is that these marketing strategies are aimed at teenagers with no sense of healthy consumption. They seduce these vulnerable teens into fulfilling their insecurities and desires with consumer products, leading to an even heavier atmosphere of materialism. Another problematic consequence of these marketing strategies is that they induce a ‘race-to-the-bottom’ competition among media providers, who end up substituting true artistic values with sex, violence or anything sensational. Why? Because the more sensational the entertainment the more it attracts corporate clients. The corporate society knows that sex and violence sell their products because they are effective attention-grabbers, especially with adolescents.
I lament two things. The first is that teenagers’ idols are not who the teenagers think they are; they are not true artists with the conviction of enriching human souls but are rather instruments of corporate propaganda. Second, teenagers are being trafficked without their knowledge. Putting these two regrettable facts, we have teenage audiences, assembled by sensual media contents, who are traded for money to corporations by the media industry. As a result, teenagers are indoctrinated with consumerism, and are bombarded with sex and violence as idols race to the bottom to make themselves more favorable to corporations. The depth of the immorality involved in this form of human trafficking on TV is no less severe than that which occurs when people are smuggled into another country to be traded for money. The only difference is that in one case it is the body that is sold; in the other case it is the human soul.
