Popular Music and Society

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Critical Interpretation of Hybrid K-Pop: The Global-

Local Paradigm of English Mixing in Lyrics

Dal Yong Jin & Woongjae Ryoo

To cite this article: Dal Yong Jin & Woongjae Ryoo (2014) Critical Interpretation of Hybrid K-Pop:
The Global-Local Paradigm of English Mixing in Lyrics, Popular Music and Society, 37:2, 113-131,
DOI: 10.1080/03007766.2012.731721

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/03007766.2012.731721

Published online: 13 Dec 2012.

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Popular Music and Society, 2014
Vol. 37, No. 2, 113–131, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03007766.2012.731721

Critical Interpretation of Hybrid K-Pop:

The Global-Local Paradigm of English
Mixing in Lyrics
Dal Yong Jin & Woongjae Ryoo

In this essay, we examine the transformation of Korean popular music through an analysis
of English mixing in lyrics in a broader socio-cultural context. In order to identify and
analyze several key factors involved in the rapid growth of English lyrics in K-Pop, we
document the development of English mixing in lyrics of Korean popular music. By
surveying the nature of and the extent to which English is employed in K-Pop and how this
hybridity is utilized as a discursive means of cultural hybridization, we also map out
whether such hybridity has generated new creative cultures, ones which are free from
Western dominance, or whether this trend eventually oppresses local music. Our aim was to
investigate the contemporary cultural stages and transition of popular music in Korea
occurring within the unfolding logic of globalization, and to interrogate the adequacy of
cultural hybridity as a plausible framework to explain cultural phenomena currently under
way throughout Korea.

Introduction
South Korean popular music (henceforth K-Pop) has witnessed tremendous change
and growth over the last two decades. Contemporary K-Pop lyrics demonstrate
different sentiments from the songs of earlier generations, and young Korean pop
artists exercise freedom of expression, including the use of lyrics of an explicitly sexual
nature (Jamie Lee 429). K-Pop has also diversified from a few limited genres, such as
trot and ballad, which were predominant until the early 1990s to more Western styles,
including rap, reggae, R&B, and hip hop in the twenty-first century. With the
danceable rhythms and catchy melodies performed by teenage singers and groups,
K-Pop has become one of the primary components of the Korean Wave (Hyunjoon
Shin 507), which is the sudden diffusion and consumption of Korean cultural
products by East and Southeast Asian audiences.
While K-Pop has been mixed with Western music genres and styles, the nascent
development of English mixing in lyrics of K-Pop is also burgeoning as a unique form

q 2012 Taylor & Francis

114 D. Y. Jin and W. Ryoo
of hybridization. English mixing in K-Pop is not new because several Korean singers
in the 1960s sang so-called translated versions of American popular songs. It was not
so long ago though, in the early 1990s, when the Korean social and cultural
environment in popular music was rather homogeneous in terms of lyrics, and
English was not a main part of Korean popular music. There was a clear absence of
English use in the main song texts, and the scarce use of English that was observed was
mainly in band names, such as Bunny Girls, Patti Kim, and Twist Kim (Jamie Lee
429– 30). Since the late 1990s, however, English has rapidly emerged as part of the
verbal repertoire of young Korean pop artists. Many singers began actively to
appropriate it in the midst of the massive usage of English in Korean society, and
English mixing in contemporary K-Pop goes beyond the level of song titles and names
of artists and bands (Jamie Lee 430). English is present on a large scale in the main
body of the lyrics of contemporary K-Pop.
This study examines the transformation of K-Pop through an analysis of English
mixing in lyrics during the late 1990s and early twenty-first century in a broader
socio-cultural context. In other words, this article documents the development of
English mixing in lyrics of Korean popular music in order to identify and examine
several key factors involved in the rapid growth of English lyrics in K-Pop. By
surveying the nature of and extent to which English is employed in K-Pop and how
this hybridity is utilized as a discursive means of cultural hybridization, this article
maps out whether hybridity has generated new creative cultures, ones which are free
from Western dominance, or whether this trend eventually oppresses local music and
soundscape. Our aim is therefore to investigate the contemporary cultural stages and
transition of popular music in Korea occurring within the unfolding logic of
globalization, and to interrogate the adequacy of cultural hybridity as a plausible
framework to explain cultural phenomena currently under way throughout Korea.
To investigate these questions, this article offers a political economic approach in
parallel with a textual analysis of the content of English mixing in K-Pop lyrics. It
mainly discusses the political and social contexts of the spread of English lyrics in
K-Pop, identifying this phenomenon as cultural (in)equality based on the different
state powers between the local (Korean) and the global (Western) that threaten the
continuity of local languages and cultures. At the textual level, it explores the major
characteristics of English mixing of lyrics in K-Pop. From the perspectives gained
from the combined angle of these two approaches, it intends to generate new insights
into the emerging discourse of cultural hybridization in Korean popular music.

Hybrid K-Pop within Cultural Globalization

There are numerous renditions of globalization and also a number of major frames of
reference in global communication research. Among these, the tension between global
and the local forces, that is, the homogenizing influence of the US-originated popular
culture and the heterogeneous creative mixings of the global and the local lie at the
center of much globalization discourse (Ritzer and Ryan 42 –47). The discourse of
 Popular Music and Society 115

Americanization, on the one hand, is more associated with a different perspective

which is globalization, itself a descendant of the cultural imperialism thesis. Although
globalization is a much broader concept than Americanization, this notion of
globalization means that locally produced cultural products are increasingly
fabricated according to the formulas set by Western-based cultural industries, and
national cultures get dislocated and wither away (Rutten 66). On the other hand,
those who emphasize the latter of these two phenomena argue that local cultures
create unique combinations as they incorporate foreign and globalizing influences,
such as those coming from the US (Penney 86). This process has been described as
hybridization (Kraidy 45–49; Pieterse 52– 55), and it primarily claims that the new
global order has to be understood as a complex, overlapping, disjunctive order, while
defying existing center-periphery models (Appadurai 32; Ryoo, “Globalization” 138).
Cultural hybridization discourse provides a richer theoretical alternative, since it
emphasizes the adaptation and active articulation of global processes with local or
regional norms, customs, needs, and traditions. Postmodern and postcolonial
approaches to the question of globalization typically seek to foreground heterogeneity
theoretically and to criticize its disparagement or transcendence by any grand
narrative. For instance, Stuart Hall acknowledges that global culture has had a
homogenizing effect on local values but recognizes the role of local reception in
shaping the communication process, where global culture is understood as a peculiar
form of capital able to rule only through local capitals (28). Understood in this way,
globalization ironically encourages local or “subaltern” people to rediscover the local
(Spivak 284, 287– 89). Jan N. Pieterse in particular claims that hybridization offers an
opportunity for local culture to be continued, and that globalization is built on the
base of local culture and local interpretation (80– 81). As such, the theory of cultural
hybridity assumes that hybrid culture is more resistant, democratic, diverse, and
heterogeneous than cultures of Western states (Appadurai 42). Bhabha (214– 16) and
Joseph also claim that domination within a culture may become more dispersed, less
orchestrated, and less purposeful because culture can then be negotiated by local and
global power. They argue that the relationship among different cultures is of
interdependence and interconnectedness more than dominance, and also that no
single hegemonic power or no single model can control all the processes of
hybridization (Bhabha; Kraidy 75– 76).
Against this backdrop, several previous works provide different perspectives in the
ways in which they represent the internationalization of popular forms of culture
(Kachru 225). In the case of English mixing in Hindi popular songs and, in particular,
in Bollywood movies, Kachru demonstrates that the primary motivation for mixing
English into Hindi song lyrics in India is to amuse the audience because English
mixing provides humor, satire, irony, and simple playfulness (227– 28). As English has
been integrated into the Indian linguistic repertoire over many centuries, it is no
longer perceived as an alien language, and hybridity as a form of mixing two languages
becomes inevitable in the Indian context. English mixing in Japanese popular music
(J-Pop) is also very common. According to one survey, nearly two-thirds of early
116 D. Y. Jin and W. Ryoo
twenty-first-century J-Pop songs contain English lyrics, and those songs tended to be
heavily influenced by Western styles but mixed with some Japanese in the lyrics,
rhymes, melody, and arrangement (Hosokawa 519– 20; Moody 208– 11). Meanwhile,
since the early 1980s, European musicians have combined their rock and rap with
English, and Rutten points out that this is a distinctive example of the
internationalization or creolization of popular music (70 –72). These scholars
certainly emphasize the significance of hybrid local music in different countries.
However, the cultural phenomenon of Korean popular music is more interesting
than these countries’ cases, primarily because of its rapid penetration in the global
market and culture. With a few exceptions, linguistically hybrid Japanese and Hindi
musics have not been able to penetrate neighboring and Western countries, unlike
contemporary hybrid K-Pop. Therefore, a rigorous, nuanced, and retrospective
analysis of K-Pop in the context of the broader society is required so that these local
cultural trends, in particular K-Pop in an era of globalization, can be fully
comprehended. Instead of endorsing the sweeping generalizations still often made
about the process of economic and cultural globalization, concentrated case-study
research can more productively attend to how a national or local mediascape is
transformed through the discursive practices and appropriation of globalization in
conjunction with wider historical and social contexts and in local and context-specific
environments (see Ryoo, “Role”).
What we have to determine is whether cultural hybridization is the negotiation of
the intersection of global and local forces. Cultural hybridity is not merely a form and
style, reflecting a new and widespread trend in global popular culture. It implies that
the hybridization of culture must occur as local cultural agents and actors interact and
negotiate with global forms, using them as resources through which local people
construct their own cultural spaces (Jin, “Critical Interpretation” 56 – 57).
Furthermore, as Bhabha points out, hybridity needs to open up “a third space”
within which diverse elements encounter and transform each other as signifying the
“in-between,” an incommensurable (that is, inaccessible by majoritarian discourses)
location where minority discourses intervene to preserve their strengths and
particularity (217– 18). Hybridity is an interpretative and reflective mode in which
assumptions of identity are interrogated (Bhabha 53– 54), and the local force should
play a pivotal role in developing local culture amid hybridization. By not only
adopting Bhabha and postcolonial approaches in its notion of the third space but also
critically developing this concept in the case of K-Pop, this article will shed light on
the current debate about hybridity by analyzing whether K-Pop as a hybrid popular
culture has achieved the third space driven by local forces.

Early Hybrid Music and Cultural Identities in K-Pop until the 1990s
The early history of Korean popular music began with the translation of Japanese or
Western popular songs, called yuhaengga, for these songs comprised the first
commercially produced music in Korea (Son, “Regulating” 53). Until the early
 Popular Music and Society 117

twentieth century, Korean traditional music, such as court music—ceremonial music

for the royal house—and farmers’ folk band music and folk songs were popular;
however, during the Japanese colonization period (1910–45), Korean traditional
music dwindled, as part of the result of Japan’s national identity eradication policy.
Enka, which had been argued to have been imported from Japan, occupied the space
created by the collapse of the court music, farmers’ folk music, and folk songs (Ryu 8).
The genre of the first popular songs of the early twentieth century acquired a new
name, trot (in Korean, ppongtchak, imitating the sound of duple rhythm),
differentiating them from the other Western-type popular songs which have arrived,
such as those in rock, blues, and pop styles (Hwang; Son, “Regulating” 52– 53). Due
to its close relationship with Japanese music, Korean popular music, some argue, has a
long history of hybridization since the 1920s; however, Min Jung Son claims that the
melody in trot had already appeared in Korea before the Japanese colonial period
(“Regulating” 53).
Right after the Japanese occupation, American forces in Korea during the Cold War
also deeply influenced Korean popular music because American military bases in the
country after World War II and the Korean War (1950– 53) became hotbeds for mass
dissemination of American pop culture (Shin and Ho 85– 86). Throughout the
occupation, the US army and its affiliated broadcaster (AFKN), as well as American
music clubs, gradually changed the Korean popular music scene and trend, from trot
to Western genres, such as rock, jazz, blues, and country music (Ryu 10). Trot as a
musical, metaphorical, and physical expression of the modern Korean identity, lost its
grip in the 1980s, as the easy-listening pop ballad rose to prominence (Son,
“Regulating” 56–61).
Meanwhile, Korean popular music until the 1980s was largely monotonous in genre
and style. The lyrics conformed to standard romantic themes and avoided sexual
connotations, concentrating on sentiments similar to the songs of earlier
generations—loss and desertion, waiting for a lover who never comes, and admiration
for the voice of a lover (Howard 83). However, popular music had sometimes
expressed the meaning of ordinary people, and, at other times, it had confronted and
negotiated with society and history throughout the Japanese occupation of the Korean
peninsula until 1945 and the Vietnam War in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Throughout the 1990s, however, the Korean music industry witnessed fundamental
changes, such as heavy promotion and marketing through mainstream media and the
quick appropriation of international music trends in the midst of loosening
censorship in the post-military regime. Consequently, conventional ballads and
visually oriented dance tunes dominated the mainstream (Jung-yup Lee 491). The
Japanese-originated idol star system of the 1980s also settled into the Korean popular
music industry. Music production companies focused on fostering television-friendly
young talents—talents not just with singing ability (or the lack of it), but dancing and
general all-round television entertainers’ capabilities (Jung-yup Lee 491– 92).
K-pop has especially experienced unprecedented development in music genre,
primarily from ballad to Western music styles since the early 1990s. The first and
118 D. Y. Jin and W. Ryoo
foremost historical event was the appearance of Seo Taiji and Boys who introduced
“Nan arayo” (“I Know,” 1992), which was one of the first rap tracks to use the Korean
language (Morelli 250– 52). This experiment succeeded and partially destroyed the
existing system, resulting in the popularity of rap in Korean popular music (Choi).
There is an undeniable cultural or stylistic hybridity in the music of Seo Taiji and his
contemporaries in that lyricism in vocal lines and acoustic instruments absorbed from
the ballad tradition as well as the song movement of previous decades are juxtaposed
with one or more foreign styles. They creatively mix genres like rap, soul, rock and roll,
and techno to invent a unique musical form which employs rap only during the verses,
singing choruses in a pop style (Morelli 250) with dynamic dance movements. With
the arrival of American hip-hop culture and rap music, Korean popular music became
youth oriented, and a number of teenage boy and girl bands targeting audiences in
their teens and early 20s have dominated K-Pop ever since (Jung 76–77).
More specifically, Seo Taiji and Boys’ music touched on several social and political
issues, which were previously not seen frequently in Korean pop music. Seo Taiji’s
music style was chanted by many teenagers who were under tremendous pressure to
study to get into a university, as the group talked about this hardship in “Classroom
Idea” (1994). The group became even more socially charged, targeting problems such
as teen runaways and economic inequality (“When They Conquer the World,” 1996)
in their lyrics. What Seo Taiji and Boys represented was a discourse of resistance, in
particular rejecting the norms of the older generation (Choi; Morelli 250 –52). Due to
these numerous and unique elements in Seo Taiji and Boys’ music, regardless of the
hybridization of K-Pop in the mid-1990s, it has been seen as representative of a
distinctively Korean pop style. This implies that Seo Taiji has developed a unique form
of Korean popular music through a mix of Western genres and styles with Korean
sentiments without English lyrics.
Right after the 1997 financial crisis, as well as the sudden disbanding and
immediate retirement of Seo Taiji and Boys in 1996, however, K-Pop changed rapidly.
New singers and groups in the post-Seo era signal a very different direction for the
Korean music industry. The majority of pop musicians, in particular teenage groups
and singers, try to create songs with provocative and direct melodies, instead of
emphasizing social issues, and in order to achieve these goals, they have turned their
attentions heavily to the mix of English and Korean in both titles and lyrics.

Socio-Cultural Analysis of English Mixing in K-Pop

There are several dimensions in explaining the rise of K-Pop in conjunction with
economic and cultural globalization, including liberalized state cultural policy,
technological development, and the changing nature of the music industry, as well as
English fever. It is crucial to understand the socio-cultural environments that drive the
appropriation of English in the lyrics of K-Pop primarily because K-Pop has been
negotiated within the swiftly changing socio-cultural environment. Most of all, the
increase in English K-Pop lyrics can be found in the broader social change in the
 Popular Music and Society 119

Korean context, because the structures and processes of media are deeply embedded
within the wider structures and processes of a given social formation (Garnham 4 – 5).
In other words, the popularity of English lyrics in K-Pop has been part of an English
boom in broadcasting and society, which has resulted in the rapid growth of English
mixing in K-Pop since the mid-1990s.
In Korea, many people started to think about the importance of English when the
1988 Olympic Games were held in Seoul. However, so-called English fever further
intensified with the globalization initiative driven by the Kim Young Sam government
in 1993, and, in particular, with the 1997 economic crisis, because English became a
must for economic as well as cultural globalization (Jin, Hands On 182– 86). Many
students in both high school and college began to go abroad for study, and they
returned to Korea a couple of years later. The Korean music industry has been directly
influenced by the English boom, partly because Korean-Americans and/or Koreans
who studied in the US take full advantage of their English fluency and cultural
resources that are not found commonly among those who were raised and educated in
Korea (Angela Shin 27).
K-Pop has indeed incorporated diverse stylistic input from abroad, which has been
closely related to the growth of hybrid K-Pop through a Korean-English mix in lyrics.
Korean-American singers or groups, including Fly to the Sky, G.O.D., Rich, You-
Seung-jun, and Drunken Tiger have not only introduced American music but also
extended English lyrics in K-Pop. The younger generation is curious and eager to
listen to Korean-American artists because they bring a different edge to Korean
popular music. With the successes of several Korean-American artists based on their
language skill, many popular Korean performers sing with a mixture of Korean and
English lyrics (Angela Shin 27). Pronunciation of English lyrics is one of the most
important elements to rap and dance music, so teenage singers and groups must learn
singing, dancing, and English before their debut with entertainment production
companies (Sunwoo Kim 40). With English expanding like wildfire through almost
every facet of Korean society, many young K-Pop musicians sing or rap in English in
addition to just covering English-language tunes.
Another major driving force in contemporary K-Pop and its English appropriation
is the entertainment industry system, known for its entertainment houses or talent
agencies, which eventually changed the landscape of the Korean music industry:
The industrialization of the star-making process started in 1989 when Su Man Lee
founded SM Entertainment . . . .Until the late 1990s, Korea had very little musical
raw material to work with. Lee, who studied in the U.S., helped change that by
cloning talent. Sifting through hundreds of raw tapes or sometimes picking kids off
the street, he put aspiring idols through a rigorous course of singing and dancing
that typically lasted two years or longer. With an eye on the Asian market, he added
language training. (Macintyre)

With the success of SM Entertainment, several famous entertainment powerhouses

have emerged, including JYPE managed by Jin-Young Park, who primarily stays and
120 D. Y. Jin and W. Ryoo
creates music in the US, and YG Entertainment, and they have further developed the
industrialization of idol factories. Unlike during the first stage of the growth of SM
Entertainment, several new entertainment powerhouses have selected teen musicians
online (e.g. from YouTube) (Sunwoo Kim 40). Since 1998, JYP Entertainment has
created new teen musicians such as G.O.D, Wonder Girls, 2AM, and 2PM. According
to Jung Wok, CEO of JYP Entertainment, the training course is sort of like a college
curriculum, so that they must pass stages before debuting (qtd in Sunwoo Kim 40).
While these entertainment powerhouses have created teenage singers and groups
armed with dance and foreign language skills, they deliberately use English lyrics, and,
in particular, have made several hook songs in recent years.
The entertainment powerhouses have contributed to the growth of K-Pop in a
couple of different ways. On the one hand, they are expanding the market to the rest of
Asia; therefore, they need to use English, which means that some K-Pop singers
trained in major agencies have to use English in order to penetrate the Asian market,
and eventually the Western market. While some musicians learn local languages,
including Japanese, to appeal to local audiences, the majority of K-Pop singers learn
English because of its role as a lingua franca in music. For example, in early 2001,
Korea’s S.M. Entertainment company was promoting a teenage girl singer named BoA
in Japan, where she ultimately became one of the most successful pop stars in Japan.
However, “BoA’s successful music career in Japan has little relation to her Koreanness.
She learned to sing in Japanese, to speak it fluently for public appearances, and to
present herself publicly as a Japanese pop star. This process of repackaging and
de-Koreanizing (or Japanizing) was the key to her success in Japan and became the
rule of success in Japan” (Jung 76). Nevertheless, BoA’s successful career in Japan has
triggered several K-Pop musicians, including Kara, to enter the Japanese music market
with songs written in Japanese. The Japanese music market is important for K-Pop
musicians because Japan has been the single largest international market for them.
Indeed, when Korea exported $31.2 million worth of music in 2009, about 69.2%
went to Japan. During the same period, Korea imported only $2.4 million worth of
Japanese music. In particular, while Korean dramas have been popular mainly for
Japanese housewives in their 40s and 50s, K-Pop has been popular among Japanese
teens and those in their twenties (Ministry, “Music . . . 2009” 221 –23). The
transnational flow of music between Korea and Japan has greatly affected the Korean
music industry. The Korean entertainment powerhouses have implemented the
Japanese idol system and some musicians learn Japanese in order to attract a Japanese
audience.
On the other hand, contemporary Korean popular music has been standardized.
Instead of providing romantic love and lyrical melodies, pop artists try to maximize
melody lines with easy English lyrics. The entertainment powerhouses have developed
the mixing of English into lyrics because it is not easy to use Korean for simple chorus
and melody lines (Soo Hyun Lee). Several entertainment powerhouses have also
invited American musicians to create K-Pop because they need to find new composers
who fit into changing patterns of youth. In fact, as of September 2009, about sixty
 Popular Music and Society 121

American composers had received contracts with Korean music companies (Yeom),
and they created several K-Pop songs, including SE7VN’s “Love Story,” Fin.K.L’s “I’ll
be Loving You Forever” (1999), and TVXQ’s “Beautiful Days.” Some K-Pop musicians
also sing remixed American pop music, such as Girls’ Generation remixed versions
and performance of “The Boys” (produced by Michael Jackson hit-maker Teddy
Riley) on The Late Show with David Letterman on 31 January 2012 (Benjamin).
This exemplifies influential American musicians’ direct involvement in K-Pop
productions, which seem to represent the hybridization of popular culture in a global
context.
Meanwhile, the digitization of the music industry, as well as the development of
social media, has facilitated the process of hybridization of K-Pop. For many artists,
social media like YouTube and Twitter have become crucial tools to reach audiences in
formerly hard-to-access markets like the US and Europe. Korean artists are bypassing
traditional outlets like radio and television, aggressively steering their efforts to go
international via the Internet. Social media savvy K-pop stars are now tweeting,
YouTubing and Facebooking their way up music charts across and beyond Asia (Yoon).
These social media have accelerated a significant change in music consumption, which
means K-Pop artists utilize repetitive verses and choruses primarily written in English
or English mixed with Korean to target young generations who seek entertainment
embedded in new media. While consumer spending on albums has substantially
decreased as in many other countries, digital distribution, consisting of music
distributed to mobile phones and of music downloaded from the Internet through
licensed services, has soared so much that Korea ranks at the top of the digital recorded
music market. In 2004, the Korean recorded music market was valued at $178 million,
and it rose to $409 million in 2008. As a reflection of the rapid growth of digital
technologies in Korea, the digital recorded music market comprised as much as 62% of
the overall market, which was the largest in the world. Although the US music market
was the largest overall, the digital sector consisted of only 31.4% in 2008
(PriceWaterHouseCoopers 276 –78). The digitization of the Korean music market
has changed the ecology of the music industry.
The last, but not the least, element facilitating English mixing in lyrics of K-Pop is
loosening censorship. The Korean government had censored popular music until the
mid-1990s to uphold morals and prevent political agitation under the military
regime. Under this past censorship, songs with more than one third of their lyrics
written in English were also banned by the semi-state Korean Public Performance
Ethics Committee. However, the government changed this censorship in 1996 in the
name of freedom of speech in artistic fields, resulting in the rapid growth of English
mixing in K-Pop lyrics. Korean record companies are now free to publish any songs.
The decision of whether to air the songs or not has been left to the discretion of
individual broadcasting stations (Byun). Apparently prompted by the abolition of
censorship, young Korean pop singers with sights set on overseas markets are swiftly
taking to singing in English. It has become a fad among young singers to include one
or two English songs on new albums (Byun). As a result, one may argue that the
122 D. Y. Jin and W. Ryoo
current heyday of K-Pop has been fostered by structural shifts in the Korean
economic, business, and other institutional structures within the entertainment
industry. New state legislation, incentives and/or actions in the media and culture
industry, technological and artistic advances, and also primarily the entry into the
music industry and rise of large entertainment companies all contributed to this
cultural phenomenon. The cultural policies of the Korean government in the past few
years have centered on the proliferation of cultural creativity (Yim 41–42).
These factors alone do not explain the growth of English lyrics in K-Pop.
Nevertheless, they have certainly played major roles in the process. Korean pop
musicians have mixed two different cultures, mainly American pop music and Korean
music. The hybridization process, in terms of the mixing of two different cultures
through genres and languages, is prevalent in K-Pop. In the era of globalization, open
borders and migration are the reality (Omoniyi 195), and Korean society has been
influenced by a colossal English entertainment industry, which has been a new trend
in K-Pop over the last fifteen years, as will be detailed in the next section.

English Mixing in K-Pop and Cultural Globalization in the Twentieth-First

Century
English has emerged as part of the verbal repertoire of young Korean pop artists since
the late 1990s. While music genres that originated in Western countries have brought
stylistic changes and have represented hybridization between Western genres and
national content in K-Pop, English mixing in lyrics is a hybridization of content,
which is crucial in understanding K-Pop. English mixing in lyrics of K-Pop has not
been out of the ordinary. Furthermore, music might be one of the most significant
cultural genres showing large-scale use of a foreign language. The fusion of local and
global dialogues in contemporary Korea is presented in the form of English mixing in
K-Pop (Jamie Lee 430).
In order to engage more elaborately with the level of discourse at which the details
of English appropriation in K-Pop and the nature of hybridization are prominent, we
analyze contemporary popular music in the Annual Top Fifty Kayo (contemporary
pop music) Charts on Melon, which is a music site that records music trends and
ranks K-Pop. Melon.com ranks K-Pop based on two major resources. One is the sales
of music CDs and cassette tapes (70%) and the other is the number of appearances on
television and radio (30%). Given that English mixing in K-Pop lyrics started
primarily in the late 1990s, we selected several key moments, starting in 1990 and
ending in 2010, for the analysis. Every fifth year of data, including 1995, 2000, 2005,
and 2010, demonstrates the changing patterns of K-Pop, pertaining not only to
English usage, but also to music genres and styles during the last two decades.
According to these charts, English appropriation in K-Pop has shown tremendous
growth in three different areas: the names of pop singers or groups, song titles, and
lyrics. The major shift began with the names of singers. In 1990, among the singers of
the top fifty songs, none used English in their name. Until then, K-Pop musicians
 Popular Music and Society 123

predominantly used their Korean names, and it was widely considered as a norm
in the Korean music industry to do so. In 1995, the situation began to change,
and fourteen of them used English names (28%). During the same period,
popular singers (Gun-mo Kim, Mi-kyung Park, Jin-young Park, Seong-chul Lee,
and Jin-seop Byun) used Korean names; however, unlike in the early 1990s, some
singers and groups began to use English names, such as DJ DOC, 015B, Piano,
and Solid. Most of all, as a direct effect of the abolition of censorship on lyrics
written in English and the 1997 financial crisis, which brought English fever to
Korean society, the usage of English in K-Pop, including in artists’ names, song
titles, and lyrics has soared since the late 1990s. In 2000, among the top fifty
songs, seventeen singers and groups (34%) used English names, and they
surpassed the halfway point (thirty-one, 62%) in 2005. Most recently, as many as
forty-one musicians (82%) used English names on the top fifty songs chart in
2010, although, in most cases, three or four popular singers and groups made
several songs on the list at the same time. Since there are many musicians using
English names (e.g. IU, Sister, T-ara, GC&TOP, BEAST, and After School), it has
not been common to see singers using their Korean names (e.g. Ji-youg Baek, In-
young Seo, and Gak-Hue). In particular, while singers used their Korean
characters for English names until the early 1990s, K-Pop singers now use their
English names directly.
This trend is similarly applicable to song tiles. As the years go by, English usage in
song titles in K-Pop has become more commonplace. Among the songs comprising the
top fifty popular music list of 1990, there were only three song titles using English, and
four song titles using English in 1995 (8%), encompassing “Murphy’s Law,” “Sadness
of Superman,” and “Warning from Eve.” However, this went up to fifteen (30%) in
2000 when “Love Affair” by Chang-Jung Lim reached the top spot. The upward trend
changed for a while, and, in 2005, nine song titles (18%) were in English, such as “Run
to You,” “Rain (Bi’s) Rhapsody,” “Tears, Lie, and Sad Salsa.” However, the number of
English song titles in 2010 soared again and consisted of twenty-two (44% of the total),
and the upward trend may go on. Unlike in previous years, English song titles now tend
to use exclamations and/or only one or two words as a reflection of new youth culture,
which is neither serious nor discreet. Song titles, such as “yayaya,” “Oh Yeah!,” “High
High,” “Jumping,” “L.O.V.E.,” and “GONE” are exemplary cases of this trend. While
popular musicians have increased their usage of English in song titles, the titles have
also reflected the changing contemporary Korean society. These new English titles have
shown a great deal of lyrical difference compared to previous popular music. In the
mid-1990s, right after Seo Taiji introduced rap, several singers developed Korean rap,
though the lyrics were still similar to traditional ballads.
More specifically, for a textual level analysis, we selected three of the most popular
songs, one from the 1990s and two from late 2010. Gun Mo Kim’s “Wrongful
Meeting” had been the best song in 1995, and Girls’ Generation’s “Gee” and “Kara’s
Jumping” were the most popular songs in 2009 and 2010, respectively. While there are
many songs, these certainly represented trends observed during their years of release
124 D. Y. Jin and W. Ryoo
as the most successful in the charts, showing the differences in their genres, dance
styles, and English usage. This means that we chose these songs for analysis, not only
because they were the most popular songs of the time, but also because they reflected
the changing nature of K-Pop in terms of genre and style, which are exemplary cases of
hybrid popular music.
First, Gun Mo Kim was one of the most famous rappers in the 1990s. The album
which included “Wrongful Meeting” sold 3.5 million copies, still the largest sales in K-
Pop history.
Although Gun Mo Kim has become one of the most famous K-Pop singers with a
hybrid music genre, he has rarely used English, as his song “Wrongful Meeting”
exemplifies. Without any English words, the song, which was in a hybrid Euro dance
style (combining house, Hi-NRG, and reggae with dance), spoke of a wrongful
encounter between his girlfriend and his best friend. Kim’s lyrics conformed to
standard romantic themes. While this song was hybridized, the lyrics avoided sexual
connotations, concentrating on sentiments familiar from the songs of earlier
generations. The song is also traditional in style in the way that three verses make up
the song, unlike the majority of recent K-Pop music which emphasizes choruses
instead of verses. Until then, hybridization meant the mix of local sentiments and
global genres, not a global language. As Iwabuchi pointed out, “Many Asian pop stars
did not represent a local traditional culture per se, but relied on intensely hybridized
foreign, most importantly American influences” (146), which has resulted in the
growth of local popular music in Asia. However, this does not suggest an eradication
of American-dominated transnational cultural power (Iwabuchi 146– 47), because
local musicians, including K-Pop singers in the 1990s, developed local-oriented
hybrid music, emphasizing the importance of local mentalities.
Compared to “Wrongful Meeting” and other K-Pop songs which were famous in
the 1990s, K-Pop singers and groups who now use English names on a large scale
utilize English mixing in their songs. Although there are different degrees of
appropriating English, the majority of young pop musicians, known collectively as the
idol generation, mix Korean and English. For example, “Kara’s Jumping,” which was
one of the most sensational and successful popular songs in 2010, used English in both
verse and chorus.
“Kara’s Jumping” has been acclaimed in both Japan and Korea as the song was
released simultaneously in both countries in late 2010. The song has two distinctive
elements. On the one hand, the lyrics mix Korean and English, with the first and last
lines forming an English chorus. The text’s narrative also repeats some English words,
including only you. Kara’s “Jumping” starts with the chorus (“Jumpin’ Jumpin’
Jumpin’ up”), which is an abbreviation of both English phrases jumping in and
jumping up, and the song ends with the same chorus, which is a short riff that
audiences can easily memorize. On the other hand, it is sort of a hook song, which
includes a musical idea, often a short riff, passage, or phrase, intended to catch the ear
of the listener (Covach 71). The hook song has become one of the most popular types
 Popular Music and Society 125

in K-Pop since the early twenty-first century. Most choruses are lyrically English, of
course.
The hook song and its mix of English has especially become popular with K-Pop
girl group Girls’ Generation. The group’s “Gee,” which was released in January 2009, is
a fast tempo song about a girl who has fallen in love for the first time.
The title represents an exclamation of surprise, similar to “Oh, my goodness.”
“Gee” begins with three lines in English followed by two lines in Korean and another
two lines in English, which function as the refrain of the song. The song then
continues for several verses and choruses in English and switches to Korean in the
penultimate line above. As is typical, the chorus uses very short English words, such as
gee, baby, and oh, yeah. “Gee,” a light dance song, has become one of the most popular
Korean songs, with more than 65.6 million hits on YouTube as of 12 February 2011,
and many K-Pop musicians have widely adopted a catchy hook song.
As such, recent K-Pop is an exemplary case of hybridization in both style and
language, and the amount of English mixing in K-Pop lyrics has soared. Among the
top fifty K-Pop songs in December 2010, twenty-eight (56%) used English in their
lyrics. English mixing in lyrics is not just a new phenomenon, but now a fully fledged
epidemic in K-Pop.

Global-Local Dialectics of Hybrid K-Pop

English mixing in the lyrics of K-Pop and a mix of music genres are two of the most
significant changes in contemporary K-Pop. The Korean music industry has certainly
been successful, primarily because several K-Pop singers and groups who fully utilize
the hybridization of English and global resources, such as genres and styles, have
become popular both domestically and globally. As a consequence of these new
developments, the Korean music industry has gained popularity as the market share of
K-Pop in Korea increased from about 70% in the 1990s to 84.7% in 2007 (Ministry,
“Music . . . 2008” 3). Several K-Pop musicians have also penetrated neighboring
countries and some European countries. A few K-Pop groups have even made their US
debuts in recent years. As mentioned above, for example, Girls’ Generation made a big
US network TV debut on The Late Show with David Letterman on 31 January 2012.
The global presence of K-Pop armed with English mixing in lyrics in the twenty-
first century has brought about two distinctive, but somewhat contradictory
discourses. In particular, when one reaches the question of whether K-Pop
appropriating English in its lyrics has developed a third culture or whether it is only a
simple mix or fusion of two different stylistic characteristics, the debates heat up. On
the one hand, a few media scholars believe that English mixing activities in K-Pop are
quite heterogeneous because the size of the English-language units varies from a single
word to an entire song. For them, “English mixing in the song texts is not
homogeneous in its forms and functions” (Jamie Lee 430). Hence, they see the process
of reception or appropriation not as a one-way transmission of ideology but, rather, as
126 D. Y. Jin and W. Ryoo
a creative encounter and interpretation among individuals at various local and
national levels.
More specifically, a series of government action plans in the 1990s and 2000s, for
instance, comprised a wide range of programs to build a strong cultural infrastructure
in Korean society by encouraging creative activities in various areas of culture and the
arts. Among the notable programs are the preservation and modernization of the
nation’s traditional and artistic legacies, training of specialized artists in culture and the
arts, expanding cultural facilities in villages and local autonomous regions,
constructing the nationwide multimedia and computer networks for cultural
information, and publicizing the cases of successful artists and athletes to encourage
the young generation to pursue careers as new intellectuals (“Cultural Policy”). From a
structural point of view, K-Pop has also mixed Western genres and Korean sentiments,
such as loss and desertion, waiting for a lover who never comes, and admiration for the
voice of a lover. K-Pop has rapidly absorbed hip hop, dance, soul, and R&B which are
popular in the West, and mixed them with Korean popular music in terms of diverse
rhythms, strong vocals, and group dances (Yoon).
In these senses, one may contend that any form of global popular culture engenders
a creative form of hybridization working towards re-imagining national, local, or
regional identities through the creative rendition, articulation, and reciprocal cultural
exchange in the global/local context. Thus the rich and diverse attributes of the K-Pop
phenomenon, including its products, artists, circulation, or consumption, may
suggest the possibility that this hybrid global cultural form might be understood as a
potential node of cultural practice for new local or regional identity formation.
On the other hand, although K-Pop is currently in a booming age with idol stars
who focus on hybrid K-Pop boosted by fans around the globe, many music
commentators, including music critics and TV producers, point out that much of
Korean pop music is another version of American music. While there are many songs
showing a mix of two languages and two styles, what they emphasize is that Korean
pop artists should focus on their originality, instead of imitating US boy bands or
Japanese idol groups (Yoon-mi Kim). While contemporary K-Pop has advanced
hybrid culture, it is less likely that the Korean music industry is developing a creative
form of hybridization, known as the third space, which works towards maintaining
local identities in the global context. K-Pop has been homogenized in the main
themes and styles because K-Pop singers and groups make heavy use of English names
and song titles, and also English mixing in lyrics.
Furthermore, many K-Pop singers appropriating English mixing of lyrics emphasize
a similar rhythm, light sexuality, and Americanized tropes such as yeah, yo, and oh, yeah.
What constitutes a difference between English lyrics in K-Pop between the late 1990s
when local musicians began to appropriate English and recent years when the majority
of K-Pop singers utilize English lyrics is the nature of the linguistically hybrid local
music. As Jamie Lee argued, until the very early twenty-first century, popular music in
Korea with its English mix at least provided the youth of the country an opportunity to
construct an identity, connect with each other, represent a discourse of resistance, and
 Popular Music and Society 127

reject the norms of the older generation (446). However, as the two exemplary K-Pop
songs analyzed in this paper (“Jumping” and “Gee”) and other songs prove, the
majority of K-Pop in recent years has not resisted the norms of Western music,
portraying both the secularism of modernity (e.g. commercialism and individualism)
and a stylistic gesture to resist modern society, because they are busy pursuing primarily
commercial successes.
In fact, while it is certain that local forces, such as local music entertainment
corporations and K-Pop singers and groups, are major drivers in the current boom of
K-Pop, there are several indicators showing the lack of the creation of a third space of
genuine hybrid culture in Korean popular music. For example, K-Pop has a tough
time making it in America because it strives to differentiate itself from its American
counterpart, but, at the same time, it looks and sounds too much like it. As discussed,
the involvement of many American musicians in creating K-Pop has become one of
the major norms because several entertainment powerhouses want to find new
composers who fit into changing patterns of youth—and they find them in the US.
However, only a few K-Pop songs made by American musicians gain popularity,
which means that the majority of them are not commercially successful either globally
and locally. As Amy He, a music journalist points out, it happens because American
audiences are not interested in consuming a distilled version of their own pop.
American listeners crave the authentic. The idea of dozens upon dozens of apprentice
performers under each major label going through years of training, learning from the
same set of vocal and dance instructors would not sit well with many American
audiences who long for gifted talents. Having native English speakers in K-Pop
groups, as in the case of Girls’ Generation, is certainly a huge difference maker in
reaching the American audience, as well as the Korean-American audience, because it
might make the music feel less foreign to most Americans (Yang). However, given that
many K-Pop musicians target the global market, including the US market, the current
form of hybridization in languages and styles—which does not show authentic or
locally driven hybrid music—cannot break the largest music market.
The contemporary form of hybridization in K-Pop proves that cultural
globalization has been a primary, enduring and inevitable process that offers the
promise of widespread and powerful global impact performed by the transnational
culture industry. By carefully examining the nature of and extent to which English is
employed in K-Pop and how this hybridity is utilized as a discursive means of cultural
hybridization, we could contend that cultural hybridity in the music realm has
undertaken global forms and styles in many cases rather than establishing a new
creative culture or a third space, one which is free from American influence. American
culture is spreading quickly through English mixing in the lyrics of local music;
therefore, the gap between a unique third culture and a mere mix of local and global
forces remains quite large. American cultural power cannot operate from an absolute
dominant position but, instead, has to intermingle significantly with local hybridizing
processes. The influence of American culture is all-pervasive in audio-visual media,
128 D. Y. Jin and W. Ryoo
and the effect of American culture, manifest through the English-ization of languages
in popular music, has been prevalent in K-Pop on many occasions.

Conclusion
This article has examined a regionally specific cultural phenomenon, with K-Pop as an
example to illustrate the complexity involved in cultural hybridization and the
implications that it has for the debate on the globalization of culture. It presents the
contemporary K-Pop trend of mixed lyrics that illustrates the playfulness
accompanying the convergence of multilingual ingredients. This may reveal the
ways in which national popular culture in general, and Korean popular music in
particular, provides a significant site for exploring how local cultural forces are highly
embedded, interrelated, or interpenetrated in the complex process of cultural as well
as economic globalization.
Korean popular music has changed substantially since the mid-1990s. The
sociocultural environments accompanying globalization have caused the rapid
transformation of K-Pop, and the local music industry is embedded in, and
transformed by, a more complex web of multi-level network connections. The
introduction of neoliberal globalization, adopting the liberalization of the
market alongside loosening censorship beginning in the mid-1990s, has expedited
the swift adoption of Western music genres and English lyrics in K-Pop. Arming
themselves with dance abilities and language skills, new idol singers and groups are
purposely utilizing English lyrics to target both domestic and foreign audiences.
Hybrid K-Pop in both lyrics and genres has achieved huge success. It is clear that K-Pop
has been developed by primarily local entertainment agencies, so one may argue that
the local force has played a major role in developing hybrid music in Korea recently.
In K-Pop, however, the transition from local and traditional to global and modern
has progressed since the mid-1990s, and K-Pop has gone through an acculturation
process and its return is re-acculturated to fit the new multilingual and multi-
sociocultural milieus. The majority of songs with English in their lyrics barely develop
cultural identities—representing Korean sentiments and social milieux—and that is
unlikely to change any time soon. In contemporary K-Pop, West-East hybridity is
evident on many levels, ranging from the contrived use of English in lyrics, to the hue
of American pop styles, to Western modernity. Some of the characteristics of K-Pop
are transnational and hybrid, and these traits involve combinations of local and
foreign elements at multiple levels: a sometimes globally originated and at other times
locally originated hybridization of culture (Jung 78). It is certainly a blend of West and
East; however, it ignores the themes of Korea and the unequal exchanges that are
implicit in the process of hybridity. A more productive way to locate the explicit
aesthetics of hybridity can function as a site for meaningful consumption (Yue 371).
We do not claim that K-Pop should rediscover romantic love and lyrical melodies,
which have been major themes in trot and ballad; nevertheless, it is clear that the
hybrid culture, in this case K-Pop, is not necessarily more rich, resistant, democratic,
 Popular Music and Society 129

diverse, and heterogeneous than the products of popular cultures of Western states.
However, what we have to understand is that the future of hybrid K-Pop needs to
develop a balance between the local and global forces to develop the third space for the
continuous growth of local popular culture. The third space is not only the in-
betweenness of national and global cultures, but also enables other positions to
emerge (Bhabha 209); however, other positions should be developed as a form of the
creation of new others of ourselves. Balancing between commercial imperatives and
cultural diversity in local popular music is not an easy task. However, it its crucial to
understand the possibility that this hybrid K-Pop genre might be a potential node of
cultural practice for new local identity formation through creating much richer and
more diverse attributes of K-Pop in the process of its products, artists, circulation and
consumption, which ask us to evaluate critically and develop the nature of hybridity.

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Notes on Contributors
Dal Yong Jin has taught in several institutions, including the University of Illinois in
Chicago, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), and Simon
Fraser University. His major research and teaching interests are globalization and
media, new media and online gaming studies, transnational cultural studies, and the
political economy of media and culture. He is the author of two books: Korea’s Online
Gaming Empire (MIT Press, 2010) and Hands On/Hands Off: The Korean State and the
Market Liberalization of the Communication Industry (Hampton Press, 2011).

Woongjae Ryoo has taught in several institutions and currently teaches at Hanyang
University in Seoul, Korea. His major research and teaching interests are in the areas
of global media and communication, communication and social change, cultural
studies, critical social theory, discourse and rhetorical studies, and qualitative research
methodology. He has published his work in Asian Journal of Communication, Media,
Culture, and Society, Journal of Contemporary Asia, Journal of International and Area
Studies, and the International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics, and is the author
of multiple books.