Name: How BTS Became A Major Moneymaker For South Korea
Uploaded: 2019-11-07T03:16:58.000Z
Duration: 12 min 6 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

In 1964 an English boy band called The Beatles made its television debut

and changed the face of the music industry forever.

More than 50 years later another foreign import is doing it again.

Meet BTS a seven member South Korean boy band from Seoul.

The band has sold millions of albums and is one of the most watched artists

Not to mention their stadium shows around the globe have quickly sold out.

It's estimated that BTS is worth about 3.6 billion

dollars per year to the economy of South Korea and more than 1 billion

The idols as South Koreans call its megastars were the reason that 1 in

every 13 foreign tourists visited the country in 2017.

BTS even partnered with visit Seoul on a tourism campaign.

which were featured in videos for the campaign have become hot spots for

Should beaches maintain their popularity they could generate 37 billion

dollars in economic value for South Korea over the next 10 years.

So how did BTS break the mold in South Korea and jump to the top of the

BTS wasn't an overnight sensation debuting in 2013 the K-pop group took its

name from a Korean expression "Bangtan Sonyeondan" which translates to

Although the acronym has since morphed to stand for beyond the scene a nod

to how connected the band is to its loyal fans known as "Army.".

K-pop is short for Korean pop or Korean popular music.

It's a music genre that blends together electronic, hip-hop, pop, rock,

The genre can be traced back to the early 90s but rose to popularity in the

It has since grown into a 5 billion dollar global industry.

Typically K-pop groups have gained a foothold in South Korea and throughout

Asia before trying to expand to a global audience.

But when they did travel abroad these trips were actually detrimental to

many of their careers because it ripped them out of the spotlight in their

So previous generations of K-pop idols Korea very much depended on TV as a

platform whereas BTS used social media to really kind of make themselves

available and visible and that can be done anywhere in the world.

The boys of BTS were signed to South Korean entertainment company Big Hit

Entertainment who had conducted the auditions that brought them together.

The group spent several years refining their dance moves and sound before

Two band members Jimin and V hailed from the Korean Arts High School in

Seoul a private educational institution that has many K-pop idols as

The school closed in February 2019 however as it was unable to keep up with

new and strict laws and decided to stop taking students.

Other performing arts high schools sometimes called K-pop schools remain.

Here young South Korean students practice their dance moves and polish

The boys hail from cities and towns from all over South Korea and were

brought together through a series of auditions in 2010 and 2011.

Big Hit Entertainment was on the brink of bankruptcy in 2007.

However it wasn't until BTS's launched that Big Hits' financials really

By 2018 the company's profit soared 97 percent from the year prior hauling

Revenue rose 132 percent from 2017 to 2018 and the company's net income

Much of this growth was due to how Big Hit first marketed betas to the

Yes kind of circumvented traditional model of the viewing on TV music shows

and gaining visibility and rather they took a route of reaching out to

global fandom through social media directly.

So it is a band that gained fame and popularity overseas even before they

The band was given full control of their social media presence and we're

encouraged to live blog their practices and daily lives.

Social media has been playing a tremendous role not only into Korean Wave

but also in exchange and propagation of culture.

In fact Korean Wave including K-pop, K-beauty, K-food, movies, and games is

a worldwide trend now because of the social media and a U.S.

In recent years the millennials have spent enormous time on social media

and a massive cultural content has been consumed especially the expansion

of Korean Wave on YouTube is the most powerful driving force.

Notably, none of the band members have their own individual accounts on

There's just one band account meaning the group's fan following is

concentrated on one account per platform.

On Twitter the band has more than 20 million followers on Instagram more

And YouTube has just over 20 million as of July 2019.

This massive fan base isn't concentrated in one country or region; it's

And that has been a major factor in BTS's success.

Their record label even gave the boys latitude to create their own solo

BTS first arrived in America in 2014, to be part of a South Korean reality

TV show called "BTS American Hustle Life" which aired on a South Korean

The show centered around the band living in L.A.

while learning more about Western culture and rap music from industry

Later that year BTS became the youngest artist to play L.A. K-con

on an annual festival that features the biggest K-pop superstars.

This performance garnered the group a lot of attention.

In 2017, BTS received its first billboard music awards for top social

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How BTS Became A Major Moneymaker For South Korea

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